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MR. LLOYD GEORGE 
E. T. RAYMOND 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 



BY 

E. T. RAYMOND 

AUTHOR OF "UNCENSORED CELEBRITIES," "PORTRAITS 
OF THE NINETIES," ETC. 




NEW ^^4fik YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






MR. LLOYD GEORGE. I 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



PREFACE 

The author freely acknowledges his debt to Mr. Hugh 
Edwards, M.P., Mr. H. Duparcq, Mr. Harold Spender, and 
Mr. Walter Roche, whose works will be in their various ways 
invaluable to the writer of the biography of Mr. Lloyd 
George. Nothing could be more admirable than the industry 
which has been expended in gathering facts concerning Mr. 
George's early life while the witnesses still live; and little re- 
mains for research in this direction. It would be impossible to 
enumerate all the authorities,— British, French, and American, 
— consulted as to the later activities of the subject, and the 
author must content himself with indicating the source of any 
specific borrowing. He has to thank Mr. D. Willoughby for 
valuable co-operation with regard both to the plan and the 
material of the work, and is greatly indebted to Mr. E. A. 
Jenkins, of the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, for 
the results of long and close parliamentary observation. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER FAOB 

I THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY II 

II THE PEOI'LE's lawyer 2() 

III MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT 43 

IV WELSH NATIONALISM 57 

V THE BOER WAR 64 

VI CHAMPION OF THE BOERS 75 

VII EDUCATION AND RELIGION 88 

VIII IN THE CABINET 102 

IX THE people's BUDGET I18 

X THE lords' VETO I33 

XI THE MARCONI CASE I5I 

XII THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR 166 

XIII AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS I74 

XIV MINISTER OF MUNITIONS 189 

XV QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 201 

XVI NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 224 

XVII UNITY OF COMMAND 24O 

XVIII THE DAWN OF PEACE 263 

XIX AT THE PEACE TABLE 276 

XX DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 297 

XXI DECAY OF THE COALITION 312 

XXII AT WORK AND PLAY 337 

INDEX 353 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

CHAPTER I 

THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 

THE Coalition Mind, so eminently illustrated by the subject 
of this study, is no new thing. Towards the close of the 
third century of the Christian era the son of a Dalmatian slave, 
profiting no less by the lack of commanding talent in his com- 
petitors than by his own great abilities, attained supreme power 
in the Roman world, effected a union of parties, skilfully con- 
verted actual and possible rivals into obedient lieutenants, con- 
trived an elaborate bureaucratic system, and became in effect the 
founder of a new Empire. 

"As the reign of Diocletian," remarks Gibbon, "was more 
illustrious than that of any of his predecessors, so was his birth 
more abject and obscure. The strong claims of merit and of 
violence had frequently superseded the ideal prerogatives of 
nobility ; but a distinct line of separation was hitherto preserved 
between the free and the servile part of mankind." 

The historian of the British Empire, equally impressed with 
a sense of significant novelty in the contrast between the 
unnotable origin and the illustrious achievement of the Right 
Honourable David Lloyd George, may be tempted to one of 
those fanciful parallels which are the besetting weakness of 
the historical imagination. The task would be neither more 
difficult nor more futile than many actually attempted. It 
could be shown that the British statesman, like the Roman, 
was helped by the failure of a predecessor whose qualities were 
"rather of the contemplative than the active kind." It could 
be argued that both showed "dexterity and application in busi- 
ness ; a judicious mixture of . . . mildness and rigour ; steadi- 

11 



12 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

ness to pursue ends; flexibility to vary means," a disposition, 
moreover, never to employ force, when a purpose could be 
effected by policy. It could be maintained that each "ensured 
his success by every means that prudence could suggest, and 
displayed with ostentation the consequences of his victory." 
Stress might be laid on the dexterity with which both co- 
ordinated apparently obdurate and discordant elements, so that 
the "singular happiness" of their administrations could (for 
a time at least) be "compared to a chorus of music whose 
harmony was regulated and maintained by the skilful hand 
of the first artist." The successor of Gibbon might, indeed, 
lack the fortune to discover in any British Field Marshal the 
analogue of that "faithful soldier" employed by Diocletian, 
who was "content to ascribe his own victories to the wise 
counsels and auspicious influence of his benefactor." But, 
while noting how the Roman Senate was deprived of its "small 
remains of power and consideration," he would hardly ignore 
the coincidence of a rapid if accidental decline in the prestige 
and authority of the House of Commons during the period 
of Mr. George's ascendancy. Observing that both the Dalma- 
tian and the Welshman made ostentation one principle of rule, 
and division another, and that both "multiplied the wheels of 
government," he might show that in each case the system 
involved a "very material disadvantage" — that is to say, "a 
more expensive establishment and consequently an increase 
of taxes," which became in a brief space an "intolerable and 
increasing grievance." 

So far the parallel is little more strained than most things 
in this vain kind. Nor is it impossible that time may further 
fortify it. In the full blaze of his glory Diocletian commanded 
the respect of the philosophic and the astonishment of the 
vulgar by a voluntary retirement. The modern statesman has 
more than once hinted that he, also, may some day withdraw 
to await, in rural seclusion, the day when he is laid, in accord- 
ance with wishes he has sometimes expressed, in a simple 
tomb under the shadow of his own mountains.^ Antique record 

*A. G. Gardiner ("Pillars of Society") relates that on the day of 
the memorial service to the Marquess of Ripon a companion laughingly 



THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 18 

leaves it uncertain whether Diocletian's interest in the cabbage 
antedated his removal to Valona. Mr. George, in the pleni- 
tude of his powers, has already revealed an interest, rare in 
urban mankind, in the still humbler mangel-wurzel. 

It is only when we approach the matter of birth that the 
parallel fails. Mr. George's extraction might be held "obscure," 
though only in a sense embracing all but a tiny minority of his 
fellow-citizens. In no sense could it be deemed "abject," still 
less "servile." It was not even in the genuine sense poor. In 
speaking of himself as a "cottage-bred man" and a "child of 
the people," Mr. George has contributed to a popular misunder- 
standing. By a tragic but common accident he spent his early 
years in close contact with the true poor. But his pedigree and 
family traditions, and even his upbringing, were authentically 
middle-class, and his own plane and ideas, from the first 
awakening of ambition, were those appropriate to the order 
which of all others offers the largest freedom and widest choice 
of self -development. 

Yet in some degree Mr. George's rise to supreme power does 
in truth present a significance such as Gibbon finds in the con- 
trast between Diocletian's origin and destiny. It marks the end 
of a definite order of things. It does not necessarily herald the 
triumph of "democracy." It does, with almost ritual emphasis, 
break the continuity of "gentlemanocracy." The true distinc- 
tion between Mr. Lloyd George and his predecessors has rela- 
tion neither to birth nor to early poverty. It is simply a dif- 
ference in training and tradition. Before him — with the 
dubious exception of Disraeli — no British prime minister had 
lacked the traditional outlook of the English upper classes. 
When Mr. Lloyd George went to lo Downing Street in the 
last month of 1916 that dreary threshold was passed for the 
first time by an official tenant who had missed (or escaped) the 
varnish of English higher culture. Of his predecessors some 
might, by chance, have lacked a public school or university 
education. But they were still gentlemen, because they had 

remarked, "When you die we'll give you a funeral like that." "No you 
won't," came the swift, almost passionate reply. "When I die you will 
lay me in the shadow of the mountains." 



14 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

either family, or money, or both. Those, on the other hand, 
who possessed neither money nor a coat of armour were gentle- 
men by virtue of their passage through one of the national 
factories for the manufacture of gentlemen. But David 
Lloyd George, belonging to no family, possessing no money, 
was deprived of what is called "formal education." 

It was indeed no ill-informed or ill-bred man who mused, 
perhaps in the very chair on which Pitt used to sit astride in 
the eager perusal of despatches, on problems vaster and more 
desperate than even Pitt had to revolve. Thirty years in the 
practice of politics and of a learned profession had given him 
a social ease and flexibility adequate to all the probable demands 
of his station. A strong memory, a rapid perception, wide i£ 
desultory reading, constant converse with the most considerable 
minds of his time had supplied the defects (easily exaggerated) 
of his schooling. It would be ridiculous to suppose that the 
varied experiences of a life spent in close contact with every 
kind of superiority could have left a singularly adaptable 
nature more deficient in the social arts and graces than a pro- 
fessor or a country clergyman. It would be absurd to suggest 
that the statesman of fifty-three was in general culture the 
inferior of every dull squire who happened to have taken 
a pass degree thirty years before. But it would be equally 
uncritical to ignore the fact that the acquirements of maturity 
are held on a different tenure from the lessons unconsciously 
learned in youth. For good and ill Mr. George was distin- 
guished in mind and spirit, in instincts and ideals, materially 
and indeed incalculably, from all his predecessors, and not least 
from those who, so far as concerned extraction, belonged as 
little as himself to the gentlemanly caste. 

It is indeed, a fact of prodigious importance that at a great 
capital crisis in British history the supreme power of direction 
fell into the hands of a statesman so little imbued with what is 
called the public school spirit. The case was exaggerated by 
Mr. George's Welsh birth; in England the public school 
spirit extends far beyond the public schools. That spirit is 
eminently aristocratic, and if for over two hundred years the 
aristocratic temper of British political institutions had been 



THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 15 

maintained through much superficial change it was chiefly 
because almost every middle-class statesman of the first rank 
had been touched, through the universities and public schools, 
with the tone and tradition of aristocracy. Such tradition 
was, indeed, necessary to the curious conspiracy called cabinet 
government. Absolutism, whether regal or democratic, works 
through a chain of subordinates who are essentially servants. 
Under cabinet government subordinates are not servants, 
but colleagues who for convenience acknowledge a limited pri- 
macy on the part of one of their number. The system can be 
maintained only on the ideas so strongly inculcated in the public 
schools, of class loyalty, of team work, of a common aim 
and pride, of the subordination of individual interests to those 
of a side, of the vulgarity of personal display, and of the 
treachery (beyond a point) of personal ambition. The whole 
thing is a conspiracy rather than a government, and there- 
fore the honour and the discipline of cabinet rule are rather 
those of a pirate craft than of a king's ship; loyalty is modified 
by round robins, and the black spot is sometimes tendered. But 
it is nevertheless felt strongly that the interest of the ship 
should before any come first, and further there is a certain 
duty to other pirate crews ; they may be fought, but they 
must never be betrayed to Execution Dock, A politician, in 
short, may intrigue against another politician in the same 
crew ; he may even change crews and fight his former com- 
rades ; but he must be reasonably loyal to the ship while he 
is in it, and he must never seriously betray the general interest 
of all politicians. 

Even in his subordinate days Mr. George found some 
difficulty in accommodating his remarkable talents and character 
to this conception. He could seldom resist the temptation of 
organising movements, whether in the forecastle or the officers' 
mess, against the peace of the skipper, and sometimes even com- 
mitted the enormity of appealing from pirate law and opinion to 
the common enemy and victim of all political parties — the pub- 
lic. His relation to the orthodox politician was rather that of 
the individualist trader, in the break-up of mediaevalism, to the 
coUectivist guildsman. With his advent to full power the 



16 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

cabinet system went altogether. Government at once became 
scarcely less personal than in Stuart days. Under other 
names and in other forms the Whitehall of another age 
returned with sharp abruptness. The cabinet's place was 
taken by what our ancestors would have called a Cabal — a 
body owing its existence merely to the Primate Minister's 
fancy, and subservient to him as no cabinet was subservient 
to the most imperious prime minister between Walpole and 
Mr. Asquith. The House of Commons ceased to have much 
importance beyond that of a convenient theatre for the more 
impressive kind of ministerial declaration. Ministers felt no 
occasion to trouble about its confidence; the main thing was 
to retain, by desert or trick, that of the prime minister. Un- 
known men exercised the most despotic powers on the simple 
authority of Mr. George's "Go and get busy." On the other 
hand, experienced statesmen found themselves liable to inter- 
ference in those matters which had always been considered 
within the sole discretion of a departmental chief. In a week 
the whole face of English political life was changed. Only the 
more stupid politicians continued the dull business of public 
speech and question; astute generals quickly discerned that to 
get things done it was better not to address the War Office; 
foreign diplomatists of perception at once realised that the 
real Foreign Minister slept in Mr, George's bed and sat at 
Mr. George's breakfast-table; there was hardly a coal-heaver 
who did not soon divine that the one man to reach was not 
the disconsolate President of the Board of Trade, or the 
dummy Minister of Labour, but the head of the Government. 
Mr. George, indeed, has never been a prime minister in the 
old sense. His system has revealed many virtues and many 
defects ; but its vigour and its caprice, its prompt decisions and 
its unashamed reversals of policy, its audacities of conception 
and its panicky abandonments have nothing in common with the 
virtues and defects of parliamentarism. The source of his 
power is personal; the exercise of it is personal. The policy 
of his government has been simply the expression of his 
varying inspirations and prejudices, modified by tactical neces- 
sity. It has never been that of a government of the older 



THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 17 

type, — that of a number of men, some clever, some stupid, some 
rash, some cautious, but all restrained by a mass of tradition, 
convention, and precedent, constitutional, social, and spiritual. 
Mr. George has done many things, and left undone many more, 
through fear of losing popular favour or of antagonising men 
likely to be useful to him. But he never hesitated to do a 
thing because it has never been done, or because, as the phrase 
goes, it is "not done." 

This disposition has, no doubt, its roots in character, and 
would doubtless have been manifested in some degree, what- 
ever the statesman's antecedents. But the accident of tempera- 
ment would have been more gently felt, the breach in the 
continuity of things political would have been less abrupt, but 
for two facts. Mr. George was born and bred a Welshman, 
that is a man outside the English tradition. The circumstances 
of his life prevented his assimilating that tradition, and he 
arrived at supreme place singularly unaffected by the spirit 
which, for good or ill, has informed almost every prominent 
British statesman since the old English kingship became the 
modern "crown." 

The most brilliant and picturesque Welshman since Glen- 
dower was born on English soil. There still remains, in a 
dingy suburb of Manchester, the little two-storied house, built 
flush to the mean street, where, on January 17, 1863, a "sturdy, 
healthy little fellow, stronger and much more lively than his 
sister," and blessed with a wonderful head of "fine curly hair," ^ 
wailed his first comments on a not too promising world. A 
melancholy train of circumstances explains the incongruity of 
the appearance, in surroundings so alien, and so lacking in 
amenity, of one destined to add in such large measure to the 
prestige of his country. William George, the father of the 
future Prime Minister, was a man of considerable talent and 
no mean culture, but lacking in exactly those qualities of de- 
cision, energy, appetite for action with which his elder son has 
proved so richly endowed. He seems to have been a born 

* His father's description, quoted by Mr. Hugh Edwards, M.P., "D, 
Lloyd George." 



18 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

dilettante. Sprung from a substantial yeoman family long 
settled in Pembrokeshire — the Georges are supposed to owe 
their name, most rare in Wales, to a Flemish mercenary in the 
train of Henry Tudor ^ — he early conceived a strong distaste 
for the life of the land. He could not live, he said, with his 
nose dug into the soil. At the same time his mind was of the 
soft texture that rebels against the effort of concentration nec- 
essary to master any of the learned professions. He refused 
the opportunity to become a doctor, and finally drifted into 
teaching, in the fallacious hope that it would at once afford a 
satisfactory career and indulge his passion for that kind of 
reading which appeals rather to the bookworm than to the pur- 
poseful student. The choice proved in every way disappoint- 
ing. William George taught in London and Liverpool; he 
tried unsuccessfully to establish himself as a private school- 
master in Haverfordwest ; at length he was driven to accept the 
pure drudgery of a primary school at Pwlheli, in Carnarvon- 
shire. 

Here the clever but unpractical scholar — only a man of 
exceptional gifts could have attracted the notice of a 
highly intellectual divine like Dr. James Martineau, and only 
an unpractical man could have failed to make effective use 
of such endowments — married Miss Elizabeth Lloyd, of 
Llanystumdwy. The need of improving his circumstances 
impelled a move shortly afterwards to Newchurch, in Lan- 
cashire, but the venture turned out unfortunately. The Lan- 
cashire smoke distressed Mr. Greorge's lungs; the Lancashire 
temperament jarred on his haughtily sensitive spirit. The 
school managers were for the most part "rude mechanicals" 
with ideas of their own and a direct way of expressing them, 
and William George's disposition was such that (to quote his 
own words) he would "rather be the master of workpeople 
than their servant." So the odyssey of disdainful impractica- 
bility had to be resumed. At last, ill and despairing, Mr, 
George determined to return to the life of the land which he 
had contemned. 
'Mr. Hugh Edwards, M.P., "D. Lloyd George." 



THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 19 

It was while he was fulfilling his last scholastic engagement, 
the temporary charge of a school at Manchester, that the event 
occurred which has preserved his misfortunes from the oblivion 
common to thousands of such obscure tragedies. No. 5 New 
York Place, where David Lloyd George was born, was only 
the shelter of the moment, and the child, named after his 
grandfather and his mother, was but a very few months old 
when he left the filth and smoke of Lancashire for the pure 
air of Wales. William George bought the lease of a small 
holding near Haverfordwest, and settled down to the life of 
a small farmer. In June, 1864, a chill caught in gardening 
on a damp day rapidly developed into pneumonia, and, when 
his little son was still under eighteen months of age, William 
George died in his forty-fourth year. 

A few days after the funeral Mrs. George gave birth to a 
posthumous son, on whom the name of the father was bestowed. 
To this child also was assigned a due part in the family epic. 
Gentle and unselfish, William George was marked from the 
first to be his brother's understudy. Unconsciously, in the 
home and at school, he rehearsed the part he was to play in 
maturity. This David, who was later to stand in need of a 
fitting Jonathan, found one without looking beyond his family 
circle. 

In Wales, as in Ireland, ancestors are no monopoly of the 
rich, and Mrs. William George's possession in this respect 
would have been worth much to an English upstart. She 
could number among her forefathers a legendary knight and an 
indubitable astronomer. But in the middle nineteenth century 
the glories of the family were a little faded, and the only 
relative to whom the widow could look for succour was her 
bachelor brother, Richard Lloyd, the shoemaker of Llanystum- 
dwy. 

It is not easy now to picture the sort of man and tradesman 
Richard Lloyd was. On his business side he must not be con- 
fused with the yellow and melancholy being who now gains a 
precarious livelihood by doing odd repairs in an English ham- 
let. He made boots and did not merely botch them; in Eng- 



20 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

land, and in Wales even more, there was still room for the 
handicraftsman. Richard Lloyd was no mere cobbler, but a 
master shoemaker, generally employing one or two journey- 
men; he lived in proud if rough independence; he could call 
his soul, as well as his shop, his own. Poor he was, but firmly 
rooted; his was not the kind of poverty that can at any mo- 
ment be converted, on the will of another, into destitution. His 
customers wanted his work and could not well go elsewhere, 
and he was under no necessity to lie or flatter lest "the stores" 
should tempt them. He could, and did, order his spiritual and 
intellectual life as he saw fit, and was one of the few people who, 
in what his nephew has called "the blackest Tory parish in the 
land," could afford to stand forth as a consistent and unabashed 
Radical. Between leather and scepticism there was long 
thought to be some mystical relation; but Richard Lloyd was 
remarkable even in rural Wales for the fervour of his religious 
emotions and the rigidity of his religious principles. He be- 
longed to a small sect, an offshoot from the Baptists, called the 
Disciples of Christ. A distinguished tenet of this body was its 
condemnation of a paid ministry as unscriptural, and Richard 
Lloyd, like his father before him, was one of its most valued 
preachers. On indifferent matters he tended to a certain lib- 
erality, and had little in common with those unlettered saints 
who hold secular learning to be superfluous and even undesir- 
able. His naturally gentle disposition softened the asperity of 
the Calvanistic temper, and his social relations with professors 
of other creeds were generally correct if not cordial. But when 
any attack was made on his faith, or on the political creed which 
for him represented that faith in its temporal aspect, every 
fibre of his being stiffened in resistance; and for many years 
his shop was the trysting-place of all that withstood what were 
to him the twin powers of evil, the Established Church and 
the Tor)- Party. 

A stalwart and stately soul had an appropriately impressive 
lodgment. In his extreme age, with his long forked whiskers 
of snowy white, Richard Lloyd was still a man to challenge a 
second glance. But, with the severest of his life's battles left 
far behind, his features had softened into comparative ordinari- 



THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 21 

ness. In his middle years his face, lined with care, overcast 
by habitual melancholy, stern with the slow anger of one who 
sees in every human injustice an affront to the Almighty, was 
scarcely less arresting than that of some gaunt saint of Spag- 
noletto or El Greco. Whatever else may be said of it, Welsh 
Nonconformity in the nineteenth century was a genuinely 
popular religion; with the dignity always attaching to a faith 
held fervently by the common people; and this dignity could 
hardly have been better symbolised than in the figure, almost 
majestic in its apostolic combination of poverty and saintliness, 
of this village shoemaker, \/ 

Such was the second father of David Lloyd George, the 
part he had assumed as a matter of course on the news of 
William George's death. He at once sought his sister, offered 
her a home, arranged for the realisation of her effects. The 
house and furniture were sold, to the anger of the children, 
who resented the auction as an outrage, and, child-like, re- 
sorted to little stratagems to prevent certain cherished articles 
being taken away. As David was at this time little over 
eighteen months old, the circumstance indicates a precocity and 
strength of memory that would be almost incredible, were inde- 
pendent proof of the fact not forthcoming.^ 

Llanystumdwy, the new home of "David Lloyd" — for so 
he was to be known for many years to come — lies inland on the 
River Dwyfawr, about two miles from the sea at Criccieth. 
The most casual study of the village, physically and politically 
considered, suffices to a due realisation of its influence on the 
future statesman. Behind it rise the mountains which have 
served in so many picturesque perorations. Between them and 
the sea is capital shooting and fishing, then, as now, strictly 
preserved. To the most unreflective stranger there comes 
always in such places a specially strong sense of the contrast 
between the wild freedom of nature and the restrictions im- 
posed by law. A thoughtful native impressed by the liberty 

* Several witnesses agree that Mr. George, when visiting his old home 
in middle life, pointed out several alterations made since his childhood. 
In the interval he had never been in the neighborhood. 



22 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

and repressed by the restrictions may be assumed to be much 
more powerfully affected. To a vivid spirited lad with some 
natural taste for small poaching and extensive hedge-breaking 
— and such, it is to be lamented, was "David Lloyd's" early 
reputation — it was natural enough that the silhouette of the 
game-keeper should stand forth with sinister distinctness 
against the background of the everlasting hills. 

And if this aspect of squire-rule suggested precocious specu- 
lations of emphatic tendency, still more positive was the effect 
of another. At his uncle's shop he heard countless stories of 
the terrorism exercised over tenants and cottagers at parlia- 
mentary elections. He was five years old when, after the elec- 
tion of 1868, numbers of men were turned out of their holdings 
because they had dared to vote against the wishes of their 
landlords. The memory of these dread things was burned in 
by countless repetitions; their effect was heightened by the 
dramatic instincts of men speaking a language singularly suited 
to emotional expression; and it is small wonder that the lad 
grew up to think of landlords as almost a separate species, as 
men of prey, a race unjust, implacable, uncompassionate, with 
desires "bloody, greedy, starved, and ravenous." Even their 
religion was an offence. To the lad brought up in the straitest 
sect of the Baptists, the Parish Church became the symbol, not 
alone of a noxious superstitution, but of a domination detested 
as alien and resented as practically oppressive. For the rest the 
shoemaker's meagre table, often meatless — the chief luxury 
"half-an-egg on Sundays" ^ — imparted an indelible impres- 
sion of the concrete facts of poverty. 

Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that David Lloyd's 
life was generally sombre, or that it was overshadowed by any 
painful sense of humiliation. Some of its privations were due 
to the situation and the period rather than to the worldly cir- 
cumstances of the household; fresh meat was something of a 
rarity in quite well-to-do country households before the days 
of cold storage, and the art of dividing a soft-boiled egg was 
perfectly understood by middle-class mothers when eggs could 
be bought for twenty-two or twenty- four to the shilling. The 
* The fact was stated by Mr. Lloyd George in a speech made in 1898. 



THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 28 

Lloyds, moreover, were not a specially humble family; they 
enjoyed, on many grounds, — material, moral, and intellectual — 
a sort of primacy in the village. The glimpses we have of the 
lad's life suggest a "happy human boy." The good uncle knew 
how to be severe; his religion forbade much gaiety; and, as in 
most puritan households, there was a tendency to expect and 
promote an unnatural spiritual precocity; David Lloyd seems 
to have learned to preach almost as soon as to manage a hoop. 
But the ill effects which might have been produced on a child 
of another temperament were happily wanting. Even as a lad 
Mr. George seems to have been able to divide his being into 
water-tight compartments. There was the small Calvinist 
chapel-goer, thinking how fine it would be to occupy a pulpit and 
make people tremble some day. There was the fiery little poli- 
tician. There was the scholar, never applying specially, but al- 
ways quick and competent. There was the wanderer in woods 
and raider of orchards. There was the devourer of every book 
that happened to pass the censorship of his uncle. Each of these 
was a separate being. The uncle knew nothing until much later 
of the nephew's eager interest in light literature. The boy who 
got good conduct marks at school was a different being among 
the chosen companions of his small naughtinesses, and few, 
again, of these comrades understood the deeper things which 
even then were simmering in his active brain. 

Those who think of education in terms of expense and com- 
plication may smile when Mr. Lloyd George insists that he sat 
at the feet of a "great schoolmaster." Those who remember 
how thorough were some of the old Voluntary schools in what 
they did profess to teach, and how conscientious were many 
of the masters, will not be disposed to deny David Evans's title 
to that tribute. He knew much, and could teach all he knew. 
Under him the lad acquired and (more important) digested 
a considerable stock of information. Curiously enough, arith- 
metic was his strong subject; he acquired great skill in the 
working of long practice sums, and was never known to make 
any mistake as between ninepence and fourpence. He acquired 
much arcana of geography, and was reputed unequalled in his 
knowledge of "principal towns" and "chief products." He 



24 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

gained also an amazing acquaintance with the Scriptures, and 
especially with those Old Testament stories which for him 
supplied much of the excitement other boys find in detective 
stories. General literature he assimilated in the manner peculiar 
to him in later life; reading rapidly, and without apparent 
system, he managed to possess himself of the substance of any 
work, frivolous or learned, and what he had once noted he 
never forgot. His early habit of carrying a bundle of books is 
said to have given him that forward tilt of the head which has 
persisted through the years.^ 

Ten years of concentration on a restricted range of subjects, 
supplemented by private incursions into the English classics, 
much hearing of sermons, and much listening to political argu- 
ments at the village smithy and his uncle's shop, made David 
Lloyd at fourteen a well-informed youth. He might have a 
most vague notion of the Roman equestrian order, but he knew 
a great deal about the Welsh squirearchy. He could argue 
keenly, though he might never have heard of inductive ratioc- 
ination. He could speak and write with force and eloquence, 
though he had listened to no learned lectures on rhetoric. If he 
knew nothing about the world, he knew much about certain 
realities of life. Jowett could have taught him, no doubt, in 
how many ways polite learning and good manners would help 
him to climb high or crawl comfortably. But Jowett's best 
political economist might have learned something from him on 
many subjects, and notably on the great subject of money. 

David Lloyd knew all about its dreadful importance, and 
much about its pitiful impotence. He could see what difference 
a few miserable pieces of silver may make, in dignity and health, 
to the poor; ten or twenty pounds a year sufficed, for example, 
to place his uncle (not to mention his uncle's wards) dis- 
tinctly above the commoner sort of Llanystumdwy. On the 
other hand, he had his opportunities of noting how gold by 
the wagon-load fails to gild the folly of the fool or ennoble 
the outlook of the natural vulgarian. His uncle, the shoe- 
maker, beset with the most sordid material cares, yet held his 
soul in high tranquillity, could preach in two languages, could 

*Mr. Hugh Edwards, M.P., "D. Lloyd George." 



THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 25 

discuss affairs with knowledge and authority, was ever ready 
to play his part as leader and counsellor in all that region. His 
mother, compelled to every painful economy, revealed daily 
some new talent or dignity. But much money, much teaching 
and feeding, had not saved some local squire from darkness 
of soul and stuttering bewilderment of brain, and all the gowns 
of Bond Street could not hide the flimsiness of his womankind. 
In case, however, the youth might be too much impressed 
by such facts, over-inclined to think of man as man, and to 
ignore the importance of social demarcations, there was a cor- 
rective to hand. David Lloyd did not merely observe society 
from below. He had also some little notion of its aspect from 
above. He and his brother, it would seem, enjoyed a special 
consideration as being the only village boys who wore knicker- 
bockers; the rest of the school affected shapeless garments of 
the trouser kind. David and William, on the ground of their 
Glengarry caps and their knickerbockers — that kind, a careful 
biographer ^ notes, which are secured at the knee by elastic — 
were distinguished from the genuinely "common" children. 
The eflfects of this discovery on the future prime minister 
were no doubt various. One may have been to foster a splen- 
didly solemn ambition to do credit to his uniform — to prove 
worthy of the knickerbocker order. Another may have been 
(one hopes it was not) to tempt the lad to pride and vainglory. 
But it is within reasonable conjecture that the most enduring 
result on a bright and humorous boy was to induce a lasting 
conviction that in a world of fools it is folly to be over-wise. 
They will do best who, while keeping their own minds free, 
make use of folly by indulging it; they will remember that, if 
knickerbockers command respect, it is just as well to take 
knickerbockers a little seriously. In his irresponsible days as a 
politician Mr. Lloyd George was quite out of the larger scheme 
of knickerbocker things, and could afford to indulge his scorn 
of them. But as time went on, and he began to form a part of 
the world which thinks much of knickerbocker distinctions, 
there came a change. His personal attitude remained that of a 
slightly scornful philosopher ; but as a practical man of affairs 

* Mr. Hugh Edwards, M.P., "D. Lloyd George." 



26 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

he showed himself more than usually alive to the value of elas- 
tic-knickerbocker honours as a medium of political exchange. 

In fine, most of the puzzling complexities of Mr. Lloyd 
George's character, and not least that strange mingling of 
high impulse with small calculation, can be explained by ref- 
erence to the reactions of Llanystumdwy on a mind at once 
shrewd and generous, impressible and stubborn, given almost 
equally to valuation and fixed ideas. The faith in money, the 
disregard of money; the abiding perception of human reality, 
the cynical understanding of human weakness ; the sure sense 
of how to touch the hero in the commonest man, the not less 
certain divination of the right word to address on occasion to 
the greatest common meanness of humanity; the pity for the 
poor, the distrust of the poor ; the cloudy "social reform," the 
clear-cut, almost tradesmanlike individualism — all these con- 
tradictions have their origin in those far-off days when David 
Lloyd, with his middle-class pride, his middle-class ambition, 
his narrow material circumstances, his boundless intellectual 
curiosity, gathered from his own observations and inspirations 
more about the greatness and littleness of man than any pro- 
fessional psychologist could have taught him. 

"A Welshman," said Mr. George once, "takes to politics as 
a duck to the water." It was certainly so in his case. At five 
he had carried a flag in a Radical election procession; at six 
he had listened to the tales of men being dismissed for "voting 
yellow" ; at ten he was a participant in the village smithy de- 
bates, his "first parliament" ; and long before he left school he 
had given an example of his precocious talents as a leader of 
opposition. A sectarian question was concerned. The village 
school was supported by Church funds and under Church 
management; but, except for some half-dozen, all the boys were 
the sons of Nonconformists. It seemed to the management 
the most natural thing in the world that the Church creed and 
catechism should be taught in a Church school. To the Non- 
conformist parents, on the other hand, such instruction sa- 
voured of tyranny and blasphemy. Especially indignant was 
Richard Lloyd, to whom infant baptism was a profane mock- 



THE COTTAGE-BRED BOY 27 

ery, that his nephews, who had of course never been chris- 
tened, should be expected to affirm that their names had been 
bestowed on them by god-parents who did not exist at a cere- 
mony which had never taken place. It was a lie, in his view, 
and a blasphemous lie. 

Inflamed by the uncle's eloquence, David Lloyd planned a 
strike for the next creed-and-catechism day. He bound his 
school- fellows in a solemn league and covenant not, under any 
extremity of persecution, to utter the loathed formulas. The 
affair went off in strict accordance with plan, to the distress 
of the headmaster, and the indignation of the squire and parson, 
until the gentle William George, through fear or compassion 
for his old teacher, gave way. With this submission the game 
was up; it was general surrender and sauve qui peut. David 
Lloyd alone remained obdurate, and was punished; the pains 
and penalties he passed on, with incredible interest, to his 
meeker brother, and he had the further satisfaction, first of 
receiving the praises of his uncle, and secondly of finding that 
his protest had decided the managers not to affront so decisively 
the susceptibilities of Nonconformity.^ 

So early was displayed that fierce resentment of the pre- 
tensions of the Established Church which coloured Mr. Lloyd 
George's political youth, and determined the manner of his 
entry into the House of Commons. His other passion, a 
hatred of landlordism, was no doubt nourished by his boyish 
collisions with keepers and other agents of the dominant caste, 
perhaps by physical attentions from some angry squire in per- 
son. For "that David Lloyd" — with such tinge of disparage- 
ment he was generally referred to by farmers and land-owners 
— had the character of a desperate hedge-breaker and depre- 
dator, and his own confessions suggest that it was not alto- 
gether unmerited. "The land round our village," he once said 
in public, "was strictly preserved, but that did not prevent us 
having our full share of nature's bounty in the form of apples 
and nuts." But the landlords, who could hardly be expected to 
share these liberal views, sometimes took fell vengeance. "A 

* The story is told in great detail both by Mr. Htagh Edwards and Mr. 
H. Duparcq. 



28 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

boy once killed a hare, and as a result he had to be sent away 
by his widowed mother from the farm she occupied; failing 
that, she was told she would be turned out of her home." 

Hard is the fate of the obscure oppressors of the famous. 
Their point of view is never given. We all know what Shake- 
speare thought of Sir Thomas Lucy. Nobody knows or cares 
what Sir Thomas might have had to say about Shakespeare. 
Yet probably he had, whether according to the Decalogue or 
the law of England, an excellent case, of which he was too 
good-natured to take full advantage ; and something, no doubt, 
might also be said on behalf of the despots of Llanystumdwy. 
It is annoying to have hares killed. It is inconvenient to have 
fences broken. And what hasty landlord is to guess that a 
curly-haired, wide-eyed, large-headed, handsome imp in Glen- 
garry cap and elastic knickerbockers, whom he cuffs for tres- 
passing, will some day be a powerful minister, with a will and 
a memory ? 



CHAPTER II 

THE people's lawyer 

Q CHOLARSHIPS and exhibitions are seldom useful to 
^ those who most need them. They save the pockets of 
people who might possibly afford the cost of a higher education 
for their children. To the really poor they are pure mockery, 
and the class just above the really poor is usually little better 
placed. In the case of David Lloyd public school and univers- 
ity were out of the question, since the difference between the 
most valuable scholarship and the actual cost of maintenance 
was far beyond the means of Richard Lloyd. Whatever calling 
the boy might adopt, he must dispense with any better founda- 
tion of general culture than the village school could afford, or 
his private efforts supply. To-day, with all the millions spent 
on education, the position of a bright lad in his special circum- 
stances would be scarcely less hopeless. 

It is decisive evidence of the strength of middle-class tradi- 
tions in the Lloyd and George families, however humble their 
actual circumstances, that there was never any idea of disposing 
of the youth in some manual trade. Both his mother and his 
uncle were determined that he should take his proper rank 
among the black-coats. But as what ? 

The boy's natural bent was, at fourteen or so, toward preach- 
ing. It is not necessary to infer a strong spiritual bias. The 
truth is rather that to a poor and gifted Welsh youth of his 
time the pulpit offered attractions an Englishman finds it hard 
to understand. It promised little money, but high consider- 
ation, power, and above all, the satisfaction of that imperious 
Cymric sense of drama to which Puritanism has denied secular 
outlet. All the motives — and of course more — that would 
tempt a country lad in England to the stage made a country 
lad in Wales "pulpit-struck." In David Lloyd, conscious of 

29 



30 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

great powers of expression, fond of authority, ambitious of 
applause, the spectacle of the influence wielded by the great 
Welsh preachers early awakened strong emulation. But the 
accident that his uncle's sect frowned on a professional minis- 
try was an insuperable bar to the adoption of the calling which 
would have afforded him the readiest opportunity of using his 
special gifts. Doctoring was suggested; but his horror of dis- 
ease and death made that career impossible. From teaching 
he was cut off by the family scruples; to be a teacher meant 
that he must be, or pretend to be, a Churchman. The sugges- 
tion was made to him, as to several of his schoolfellows, one of 
whom afterward became a high dignitary of the Church. 
Imagination may indulge the pleasing vision of the primate 
Mr. George might have been. But Lambeth itself would have 
beckoned in vain to the lad's mother and guardian, and no doubt 
to the lad himself. 

The lower branch of the law was finally chosen through lit- 
tle more than a whim on Mrs. George's part. At the time of 
her husband's death a kindly solicitor of Liverpool, entrusted 
with the legal charge of her poor affairs, had acted the part of a 
true friend as well as a wise counsellor. On this perhaps in- 
adequate induction she had based a high respect for lawyers 
in general ; her imagination warmed with the vision of her son 
as a legal knight errant, and this enthusiasm communicated 
itself to the lad.^ He seems really to have entered the law with 
the conviction that it was not only a most respectable calling, 
but one permitting large opportunities of unselfish service to 
all who suffer and are heavy laden. 

There were two grievous difficulties — money and education. 
The first was met by the fine generosity of Richard Lloyd, who 
proposed to devote to the purpose all the small accumulations 
of a painful thrift. The Cerberus of culture was also appeased 
partly by his help. The Incorporated Law Society demands 
that its members shall have a "liberal education," which in 
practice means that they must have a knowledge of Latin and 
French, as well as English subjects, equal to that of most boys 
when they leave a fairly good school. The admirable David 

* Mr. Hugh Edwards. M.P., "D. Lloyd George." 



THE PEOPLE'S LAWYER 31 

Evans had some Latin; French was an unknown tongue in 
Llanystumdwy. Richard Lloyd, "the man for wisdom's arts 
renowned" in all that neighbourhood, therefore decided him- 
self to learn French in order to teach it to his nephew; and 
the solemn elder and the lively youth set themselves to puzzle 
out the relation of the pen and the copy-book to the female 
gardener and the cousin of the grocer's wife. The difficulties 
of pronunciation alone must have been enormous under this 
method, and it is hardly odd that, while Mr. George reads 
French fluently, he cannot speak the language, or follow with 
any certainty a conversation between Frenchmen; French 
spoken in the English fashion — Mr. George has instanced the 
case of Viscount Grey — presents less difficulty. The time was 
to come when this disability — common, it is true, to nearly all 
British statesmen — was to prove a serious handicap. If Mr. 
George had been in a position to address Frenchmen fluently 
in their own tongue the history of the war and peace might 
have been considerably modified. 

In December, 1877, all these preliminary difficulties were 
over; the examiners had decided that David Lloyd George 
possessed enough knowledge of things in general not to dis- 
grace a learned profession. Arrangements were made to place 
him with a firm of solicitors in the business town of Portmadoc, 
and at a little over sixteen he was articled to the junior partner. 
The horizon of the lad now abruptly widened. Portmadoc 
lay six inconvenient miles from Llanystumdwy, and the articled 
clerk, being able to go home only for week-ends, was thrown 
largely on his own resources. The best thing that can happen 
to any boy is to have a good home ; the next best is to leave it ; 
that first experience of a landlady adds years to age and cubits 
to mental stature. At seventeen Mr. George was what every 
lad of seventeen should be — a man. That is, with the vivacity 
of boyhood, he united the eager interest in things not childish 
which though systematically discouraged by the tendencies of 
modern education, is appropriate to early maturity. The firm 
with which he was engaged was a considerable one, doing much 
official business ; and attendance at county courts, petty sessions, 



32 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

and meetings of local bodies gave him an insight into the way 
in which the country's affairs are managed, teaching him, in- 
cidentally, more constitutional history than is ordinarily gained 
from a reluctant perusal of Stubbs. 

At night law's grave studies suffered the competition of a 
multitude of interests. The articled clerk's natural quickness 
enabled him with little difficulty to peck the essential grain 
from the dry husks of the law ; the rapidity with which he 
could grasp any point astonished his principals and colleagues ; 
but he was far from a hard and patient reader, and the chief 
advantage of the swiftness of his processes was that it enabled 
him to find time for all sorts of miscellaneous activities. Dur- 
ing these years he managed to get through most of the English 
classics and the greater Frenchmen from Pascal to Hugo. But 
then, as later, he did not read in the spirit of the student, still 
less of the bookworm. The printed page might beguile an idle 
hour, or it might be eagerly scanned for ideas and information. 
But there was never in David Lloyd George the worship of 
other people's words. His attitude was that of the country 
Nonconformist pastrycook who rejected the vicaress's well- 
meant offer of calf's foot jelly for his sick child. "You hain't 
of our persuasion," he said, "and we makes it ourselves." Few 
of the great classics were of young Lloyd George's persuasion, 
or they would have been men of action like himself ; and very 
early in life he must have been aware that, so far as concerned 
eloquence, he could make with less trouble than he could 
borrow. When he read it was more in the spirit of criticism 
than of reverence, and less for enjoyment than with a view 
to applying the results to the one dominant purpose and interest 
of his life. 

For the boy's fancy for politics quickly grew to a passion in 
the youth, and the ideas he got from books were chiefly valued 
in proportion to their usefulness as political weapons. At 
seventeen he flew into a temper when some young men of his 
set chaffed him concerning his ambitions. "Mark my 
words," he said, as he left the room, "you laugh now, but you 
will live to see me prime minister." He was at this time 
already well on his way to that eminence. He began to speak 



THE PEOPLE'S LAWYER 33 

at meeting-houses. He took part in the discussions of the local 
debating society. He exercised his great natural talents for 
journalism, since there was no other outlet, by letters and 
other contributions to the local papers. The admirable industry 
of admirers has availed to recover from the files a great 
number of these boyish productions, which appeared under the 
modest pseudonym of "Brutus," though the style and general 
character seem rather suggestive of Mark Antony. No 
Anglican, no Tory, from Lord Salisbury downwards, was 
safe from the youthful critic. At the election of 1880 Mr. 
(afterwards Sir) Ellis Nanney, the squire of Llanstumdwy, 
had the presumption to contest Carnarvonshire. A few years 
before "Brutus" had been forced to admit the merit of this 
Caesar; the knickerbockered knee had been bowed, or rather 
the Glengarry cap had been touched, in the presence of the 
man whose father had endowed the village school. It was now 
the turn of the young tyrannicide, and if it was in an ecstacy 
of public spirit that he plunged his dagger into the breast of the 
despot, it was perhaps a strictly personal satisfaction that he 
felt in turning the weapon round. "You," he wrote, "are just 
the man whom the electors of Carnarvonshire would delight 
to reject with contumely.^ The words proved prophetic; the 
abhorred but amiable Nanney, defeated by a large majority, 
was numbered among the goats, and Mr. George could feel 
that he had contributed in some degree to the Tory discomfi- 
ture. 

This very early political utterance — the writer was only in 
his eighteenth year, a handsome boy with a rather long face and 
a wealth of wavy hair — is interesting in many ways. It 
shows how little Mr. George's style has changed in essentials. 
There are phrases — "dandlings of Liberal encouragement," 
"prodigies of Tory oppression," "supercilious and exacting 
landlords," "mainstay of despotism," "stiflers of aspiring 
liberty" — which might actually have occurred in the speeches 
of the mature statesman. But one passage is especially note- 
worthy. "Brutus" has turned from the castigation of the local 
candidate to assail the government he supports — a government 

* Mr. Hugh Edwards, M.P., "D. Lloyd George." 



34 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

"whose policy made Afghan mothers husbandless, their 
children fatherless, and both homeless, saturated the Afghan 
snows with the blood of patriots, and drove hatred of our very 
name and presence at the point of the sword into the heart of 
the Afghan nation ; whose policy made Zululand moan the loss 
of thousands of its brave sons, devastated its fertile plains, 
turned its happy kraals into sombre mortuaries, and sacrificed 
its nationality upon a pyre erected with the carcases of its 
brave defenders." 

This outburst is obviously sincere ; cynicism, however imma- 
ture, would have avoided the topics of Afghan orphans and 
happy kraals. But the feeling is not at all that of the pacificist ; 
it is not the feeling which might have inspired Mr. Massingham 
at the same age. There is no horror of bloodshed, but only a 
hatred of aggression : no condemnation of war, but a most 
emphatic condemnation of trespass; the protest is not that of 
the humanitarian against carnage, but of the son of a small 
nation against the supposed wrongs of other small nations. 
The point is even more clearly brought out in a later criticism 
of the Egyptian war. Mr. Lloyd George approves Arabi 
Pasha, not only as a Nationalist leader "who knew all the 
wants of the Egyptians because he had felt their wants him- 
self," but as a soldier directing a war of deliverance. 

In fact, Mr. George was at this time distinctly of the older 
Puritan school, the school which glorified the sword of Joshua, 
and did not altogether disapprove the dagger of Ehud. He was 
an active "Volunteer," and he declared in debate, during an 
argument against perpetual pensions for successful gen- 
erals, that "it was the duty of every British subject to 
fight for his country without expecting a pension, since, by so 
fighting, he was defending his own interests as well as the 
interests of his fellows." Later association with the English 
Puritans of the new soft-hearted school led Mr. George to 
adopt many of their arguments and perhaps, for the moment, 
some of their convictions; but what we feel is always more 
powerful than what we have schooled ourselves to say, and 
the conscriptionist of 191 5 was much nearer the real Lloyd 
George than was the passionate pilgrim of disarmament of a 



THE PEOPLE'S LAWYER 35 

somewhat earlier date. A man of blood Mr. George could 
never be; his common-sense as well as his humanity would 
avoid war if avoidance were any way possible; and for some 
years political fortune made him bedfellow with true Pacifists. 
But he has never had genuine affinities with English Pacificism, 
whether religious or agnostic. 

An early pronouncement on Ireland deserves notice. Written 
at the age of nineteen, it shows that, if there is as yet little 
originality of thought, there is a very considerable power of 
dextrously handling the thoughts of others. There are words 
like "riant" and "fuscous" which suggest stylistic ambitions, 
but for the most part the young politician is content with the 
common coinage, and, as at a later period, the effect of elo- 
quence is obtained by vigour rather than by distinction of 
language ; so long as there is momentum in the rhetorical stream 
it matters nothing if it be a little turbid. We learn that Ireland 
suffers from the "sores inflicted by satanic landlordism." The 
"god of property" is denounced, and the House of Lords 
arraigned as a "lumber-room of musty prejudice" and an 
"asylum of hereditary delusions." It is the duty of statesmen 
to "provide for the wants of a people before respecting the 
urbanity of a class," to "alleviate the misery of the poor before 
pandering to the vanity of the rich." It is criminal to "send 
a punt to save a boat's crew because the lifeboat is wanted for 
a pleasure trip," and only after you have kept your family from 
starving you can properly "apply what remains of your income 
to powder your flunkeys." 

At this stage the young politician naturally dealt in generali- 
ties, but a very few years later he had come to definite conclu- 
sions concerning Ireland which were destined powerfully to 
affect his subsequent attitude. When Mr. Gladstone declared 
for Irish Home Rule, Mr. George immediately demanded 
Welsh Home Rule; he could not conceive how those who 
advocated the one could discover any plausible objection 
to the other. His position was thus much nearer Mr. Chamber- 
lain's than Mr. Gladstone's, and while he neither liked nor 
trusted Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chamberlain was at this time his 
hero. The Whigs, with their "humdrum Liberalism" were 



36 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

indeed only slightly less hateful to him than the Tories. It 
was little more than an accident which prevented Mr. George 
from being definitely drawn in the wake of the man whom he 
hailed in 1884 as "without doubt the future leader of the 
people." But when Mr. Chamberlain hardened into opposition 
to any kind of Home Rule Mr. George, with his already shrewd 
eye for practical politics, kept clear of the mutineers, and was 
soon even denouncing his former idol as a "renegade." But 
he never lost his liking for the "Federal Solution," otherwise 
"Home Rule all Round," and his attachment to Gladstonian 
Home Rule was always dubious and conditional. 

The year 1884 was highly important to Mr. George for in 
the course of it he came of age, passed with honours his final 
law examination, and was formally admitted as a solicitor. 
With characteristic courage he declined the safe inglorious 
servitude of a managing clerk, and at once set up for himself 
at Criccieth, whither his uncle and mother had removed from 
Llanustumdwy some four years before. Richard Lloyd's re- 
serve fund was now quite exhausted, and the young lawyer had 
to earn his first fees in the police court before he could afford 
the three guineas for the robe and neck-band without which a 
solicitor is legally invisible to a County Court judge. ^ Though 
the plunge was bold to the point of temerity, sufficient business 
came almost at once to justify it, and before long "branch 
offices" (of course on no magnificent scale) were established 
at Portmadoc and Festiniog. The choice of this latter place 
is indicative of the nature of Mr. George's industry; the quarry- 
men rather specialised in poaching; and Mr. George rather 
specialised in defending poachers. This professional work was 
a source of pleasure no less than profit ; it enabled "David Lloyd 
George, gentleman," to pay off some old scores with the kind 
of people who used to humble "David Lloyd." 

An aggressively Radical solicitor is nowhere likely to be on 
good terms with a rural Bench, and in North Wales, as every- 
where on the Celtic fringes, class feuds are more embittered 
than in the English countryside. Years of sleek deference 

* Mr. Hugh Edwards, M.P., "D. Lloyd George." 



THE PEOPLE'S LAWYER 37 

would in any case have been needed to live down the opinions 
and antecedents of the Llanystumdwy shoemaker's nephew. 
But in fact Mr. George challenged rather than deprecated the 
resentments of a game-preserving magistracy. He made a 
point of straining to the utmost the privileges of an advocate, 
and never hesitated to charge a hostile bench with partiality. 
It was essential, he said after a more than usually lively en- 
counter, to show that a solicitor could beard the justices "with- 
out being led off to instant execution." ^ Occasionally the 
client's interests may not have been advanced by the pugnacity 
of his advocate, but the advocate himself profited by the atmos- 
phere of contention seldom absent when he appeared in court. 
He became widely known as able, fearless, pertinacious, and 
as especially the "people's lawyer." Law helped with politics, 
and politics with law. Mr. George became a power in the 
Revision Courts. The temperance party threw much work in 
his way. Cases in which political feeling was involved began 
to reach his office as a matter of course, and at last, in 1888, 
chance brought him an affair which added enormously both to 
his legal and his political fame. 

This was the rather gruesome business widely known at the 
time as the Llanfrothen burial scandal. The Rector of Llan- 
frothen had assigned, in the burial ground attached to the 
parish church, a place for the interment of a poor Dissenter. 
But, being told that his services would not be required at the 
ceremony, he declined to permit burial in the grave already 
prepared, near that of the dead man's daughter, and would 
only grant in its place a plot in that "sinister" part of the burial 
ground which was used for the interment of Jews, suicides, and 
drowned seamen. On Mr. George's advice the Dissenters de- 
fied this decision, forced the gate of the burial-ground, and 
buried the dead man in the grave first chosen. The rector sued 
the relatives for damages, and won in the County Court on a 
point of law, the decision being that the graveyard, never 
having been legally conveyed to the parish by its donor, was 
the rector's private property. On appeal the judgment was 
reversed, with some severe criticism on the Court below, and 

*Mr. Hugh Edwards, M.P., "D. Lloyd George." 



88 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

the young solicitor's reputation was greatly enhanced. "By 
the time the struggle canie to an end," Mr. George himself said, 
"my name was known all over Wales." 

This good fortune was the more welcome because, in the 
same year, Mr. George had taken on himself the responsibilities 
of a husband. For some three years he had paid attentions 
to Miss Margaret Owen, the daughter of a substantial farmer 
near Criccieth. Her family was at first a little doubtful as to 
the money-making capacity of the lover. But such appre- 
hensions were set at rest by his extending practice, and the 
marriage had taken place on January 24, 1888. Local record 
preserves the fact that the town was "illuminated" on the night 
of the wedding. It was apparently the bride's popularity rather 
than the bridegroom's position which justified this display, and 
the squibs were let off, not because Mrs. Lloyd George was 
descended from Owen Glendower and "one of the best and 
greatest of the Welsh kings," but on account of the local im- 
portance and respectability of her connections. 

But while marriage might confirm Mr. George's position 
locally it seemed for the moment likely to retard rather than 
promote the realisation of those wider ambitions which he had 
never ceased to nourish. As long before as 1S81 he had spoken 
of himself, on his first visit to London, as surveying the empty 
House of Commons in the spirit of William the Conqueror at 
the Court of Edward the Confessor — "as the region of his 
future domain." Nor was he alone in believing that a great 
political future lay before him. In 1885 a Nonconformist 
divine had predicted that he would become "another Chamber- 
lain." Some time later Michael Davitt, after hearing him 
speak at a Welsh meeting, told him that he was destined to 
achieve a great parliamentary name. During the whole of his 
early manhood he had striven, often at some cost of health, to 
improve every opportunity of getting into the inner political 
circle of North Wales. A tithes agitation favoured him, and 
there are many stories of how he scored off the clerg}'men 
whose meetings he invaded. A rising politician whose family 
history is known to everybody has need of all his powers to 



THE PEOPLE'S LAWYER 89 

command the deference accorded as of right to the stranger, 
and occasionally rough jests were shot at the young orator. 
In the old Llanystumdwy days "David Lloyd" used to deliver 
his uncle's boots and shoes, and his little donkey-cart was as 
familiar in the neighbourhood as the mail-van. One day, when 
addressing a meeting, Mr. George was annoyed by a man who 
continually shouted "Where's the donkey and cart?" At last 
he retorted, "On the first point T have no information, and 
for the rest no information is necessary." 

A few years of conscientious drudgery in public speaking in 
a country district gives a man of quick parts a certain reputa- 
tion, but it needs most exceptional talent or character to conquer 
the kind of prejudice illustrated in this incident. For several 
years it should have been obvious to the Liberals of Carnarvon- 
shire that the young solicitor who could turn in a moment from 
the hardest matter-of-fact argument to the most eloquent emo- 
tional appeal, and who showed himself master of every rhe- 
torical method in two languages, would make a far stronger 
parliamentary candidate than some dull business man from 
Liverpool or some second-rate barrister from London. But 
though a few discerning men had detected the "unaccredited 
hero," he was generally regarded as simply a pushful, glib 
young fellow of no substance, well enough to .second resolutions 
at big meetings and speak on village greens, but not to be 
thought of as a serious politician. 

For a moment, however, Mr. George thought he saw his 
chance in the vacancy for Merionethshire in 1886. But the 
choice fell on Mr. "Tom" Ellis, and the success of that Welsh 
democrat, while it might cause some natural envy, fortified 
Mr. George's assurance that his own time would come. Still, 
at the time of his marriage, nothing seemed less likely than his 
almost immediate emergence from local to national politics. 
But during 1888 the Liberals of Carnarvon Boroughs, looking 
for a strong and genuinely Welsh candidate, were disappointed 
in various quarters, and at every failure one or two persistent 
stalwarts, who wanted a "good speaker," one with a "heart 
touched with a live coal from the altar on which our fore- 
fathers have been sacrificed," suggested that the solicitor of 



40 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Criccieth exactly corresponded to the requirements. At first 
these proposals were met with derision, but finally two local 
associations, representing the most fervid type of Welsh radi- 
calism and Noncomformist sentiment, definitely proposed Mr. 
George's name in connection with the candidature. The choice 
was reluctantly approved, many Liberals thinking Mr. George 
"too advanced." It needed a realistic thinker to reassure these 
timid people. "Why be afraid?" he asked. "He may be too 
advanced now, but most assuredly he will lose fifty per cent of 
his Radicalism in the House of Commons." 

It was the voice of militant Nonconformity that carried the 
day. Whatever else might be said of the proposed candidate, 
his passion for Disestablishment was undeniable, and feel- 
ing against that "old stranger," the Established Church, 
was then at fever heat. Bangor was the last of the boroughs to 
accept Mr. George. In that pleasant little town even the Non- 
conformist Liberals tempered their religious and political views 
with a certain personal respect for opponents. They had often 
shaken a bishop's hand, or taken tea at the palace, and, while 
they might think his theology deplorable, they could not deny 
that his manners were pleasant and his muffins excellent. The 
squires, whom Mr. George denounced as the bad angels of 
the village, were merely the good customers of the town. Many 
Bangor tradesmen found bad taste, still more suspected bad 
business, in attacking men who, with all their faults, did not 
deal exclusively with the stores. At last, however, even Bangor 
yielded, and early in 1889 Mr. George, declaring himself "a 
Welsh Nationalist first and a Liberal afterwards," was formally 
adopted. 

His position, however, was far from secure, and it was 
fortunate for him that the elections for the first County Coun- 
cils gave him a new prestige and authority — first as the man 
who, in defiance of the advice of Lord Rosebery, organised 
Liberal victory, and secondly as an alderman for Carnarvon- 
shire. To be an alderman, even a "boy alderman," was 
something in the eyes of respectability. The clamour of this 
contest had barely died away when, in March, 1890, the death 
of the sitting Conservative member put an end to any intrigues 



THE PEOPLE'S LAWYER 41 

against Mr. Lloyd George on the part of the still unconvinced 
elder statesmen of the Carnarvon Boroughs. Without treason 
to the flag it was no longer possible to disparage the standard- 
bearer. 

At the time the by-election of 1890 was merely an episode. 
An interesting episode, indeed, for the London papers sent 
down "special representatives," and the fluctuating fortunes of 
the candidates w^ere followed with more than usual attention by 
the party head offices. The Conservatives were anxious, as 
every party having spent some years in office must be, as to 
the feeling of the country; the Liberals had been acclaiming the 
"flowing tide," with some disappointment that it did not flow 
a little faster. Nevertheless, in contemporary chronicles of the 
time, the contest stands out less prominently than several long 
since forgotten. But in retrospect it assumes all the qualities 
of drama. Seldom, indeed, have the electoral fates so well dis- 
charged the functions of stage management. Causes and per- 
sonalities were contrasted as in an allegory ; the fight was like 
that between David and Goliath, or between Christian and 
Appolyon. Not that the Conservative candidate had anything 
to do with the powers of evil ; he was that same well-intentioned 
Mr. Nanney at whose father's school Mr. Lloyd George had 
been educated, the same amiable Mr. Nanney whom "Brutus" 
had called on the electors to "reject with contumely." Genially 
masterful, dignified, charitable and kind-hearted in his way, 
Mr. Nanney was naturally a little patronising to the young 
opponent whom he had probably patted on the head a few 
years before. On the other hand the memory of that former 
relation seems to have added to the vivacity of Mr. George's 
attacks a touch of real bitterness seldom present in his speeches. 
Months after, when the election was but a memory, he could 
not refrain from a taunt concerning the "small country squire 
flung aside by his neighbours for the sake of a country lad 
educated at a school given by his father." 

The contest was doubtful to the last. First the Liberals 
seemed to have all in their favour; then there was a threat of 
secession on the part of certain Nonconformists who insisted 



42 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

that the candidate, if elected, should not vote for Home Rule 
except on positive assurances that a Disestablishment Bill 
should be passed concurrently or immediately afterwards ; then 
Mr. George redressed the balance by sounding, in the speech 
in which he declared that "the day of the cottage-bred man has 
dawned," a note which vibrated through the constituency. 

The polling took place on April lo. The first count yielded 
a small majority for Mr. Nanney, and the returning officer was 
about to declare him elected when one of the Liberal agents, 
picking up a small bundle of papers credited to the Conservative 
candidate, discovered that, while the topmost was properly 
there, the rest were cast for Mr. George. "Demand a recount," 
he whispered. The votes were carefully scrutinised, and the 
amended result gave a majority of eighteen for the Radical. 
It was small enough, but it sufficed to send a future Prime 
Minister to Westminster, and to save the Carnarvon Boroughs 
from extinction as a separate political entity. As the peculiar 
preserve of the most celebrated man in the British Empire they 
were to be exceptionally respected under that Act of 191 7 which 
wiped out Salisbury, Windsor, and other ancient towns to 
make room for the growing democracies of Romford, Wal- 
thamstow, and Cardiff. 

In his election address Mr. George, while declaring for Mr. 
Gladstone's "noble alternative" to Irish coercion, and advocat- 
ing the usual Liberal reform, had judiciously kept in the back- 
ground — or had rather left to be inferred the unauthorised 
policy of "Young Wales." The Red Dragon had to be sought 
as in a puzzle picture. But in the moment of victory he was on 
speaking terms again with that rampant beast. Its banner, he 
declared after the poll, had been "borne aloft in triumph." "It 
floats on high, dear countrymen," he told the cheering crowd. 
"The boroughs have wiped out the stains." 

It remains only to add that Mr. Ellis Nanney, denied the 
privilege of representing the boroughs, found consolation in 
the chairmanship of the Llanystumdwy parish Council, and that 
twenty-seven years after the fight of 1890 Mr. Lloyd George, 
as Prime Minister, unveiled a portrait of his ancient enemy 
and patron. 



CHAPTER III 

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT 

THE man who thus found himself a member of Parliament 
at twenty-seven was a very different person from the lad 
who, as "Brutus," patronised Mr. Chamberlain and denounced 
Lord Salisbury. Photographs of both survive, and serve 
better than any verbal description to illustrate the changes 
brought by ten years of hard and bitter struggle. 

The lad's face, if not precisely handsome, is eminently pleas- 
ing — open, humorous, good-natured, the face of one funda- 
mentally satisfied with himself, and only dissatisfied with the 
world because it is not as good in its way as he knows himself 
to be in his. The man's face is less attractive — less engaging 
indeed, than at almost any other period. It has lost buoyancy 
and has not yet attained repose. It is the face of a highly 
combative person, but hardly that of a happy warrior ; this man, 
one would say, is as yet fighting the fight of an Ishmaelite or 
Red Indian rather than that of a soldier, let alone a crusader. 
The expression of the mouth is a little cruel, and the eyes seem 
to have the habit of looking everywhere, except in front of 
them, for ambushes and enemies. Years of hard professional 
struggle, of brow-beating and being brow-beaten, years of 
savage sectarian warfare on small local issues, anxious grasping 
after small fees and small political chances, had not quenched 
the earlier idealism, but they had hardened and toughened and 
perhaps a little coarsened; and it was not until fortune had 
begun definitely to smile on Mr. George that the fundamental 
geniality of the man quelled the bitterness of the politician. 

Mr. George in the early nineties might be compared with the 
hero of "Monte Cristo" before he lays hands on his treasure. 
He had escaped the Chateau d'lf of his early captivity, but any 
accident, any mistake of judgment, might send him back, this 

43 



44 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

time perhaps without hope. He carried with him the key to his 
desire; with due courage and resource all those imprisoned 
riches were his. But meanwhile there were terrible difficulties, 
and the worst of them was simple want of money. For some 
years the activities of Mr. George will be best understood if we 
think of him as of Edmond Dantes among the smugglers, some- 
times fighting in causes of no interest to himself, sometimes 
converting and sometimes controlling men intrinsically inferior, 
playing his own game while seeming to be thinking solely of 
other people's, doing all (including the winning of a little 
occasional prize-money) with one object ever in mind and one 
handicap ever operating. A great deal will seem aimless and 
irrelevant without constant reference to the cardinal fact of his 
situation — the mere necessity to keep going. 

There are many barriers between human individuals. But 
perhaps even the dividing lines of sex, nationality, race, creed, 
colour, native faculty, or acquired culture are far less decisive 
than that which separates the man of financial independence 
from him who can never be sure of the next day's, or month's, 
or year's, or ten years' subsistence. There can easily be friend- 
ship, true and warm, between members of the two classes; there 
can never be understanding. It is not the simple question of 
toiling and spinning on the one hand, and thoughtlessly living 
in more than Solomon's glory on the other. Many rich people 
lead much harder lives than the generality of those who subsist 
on wages or fees. The whole point is that, while people of the 
one class can toil or spin, or leave ofif toiling and spinning, 
exactly as it suits them, people of the other are bound to the 
wheel. The independent can indulge a sense of honour just as 
easily as they can nurse a cold. They can aflford at all times a 
high conception of public duty. They can always command one 
of the greatest luxuries in life — the luxury of being disin- 
terested. But, in revenge, circumstances forbid that they 
should understand the splendours that reside so often in the 
very faults and meannesses of those who can never escape the 
routine of wage-earning. People who rhapsodise about the 
**dignity of labour" are often shocked because the labourer has 
a labourer's vices. Yet there are defects of character as in- 



MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT 45 

evitable, and really just as honourable, as the defects of body 
which come of hard work never shirked; as the mechanic could 
only maintain a perfectly white hand, so the mental toiler 
would only maintain a perfectly white soul, at the cost of treason 
to somebody. To the man or woman whose frame has been 
distorted, or whose nature has been warped, by the necessity 
of work, who has had to resort occasionally to shifts equally 
mean and necessary, the physical and moral graces of wealthy 
virtue are much more exasperating than the frivolity and sensu- 
ality of the worthless rich. Perhaps that was why the old 
French aristocracy, safe while it merely bullied and idled and 
wasted, was hurried to the guillotine when, as a whole, it had 
begun to be human, kindly, decorative, and impressed with a 
sense of its responsibilities. It was really as if the people had 
exclaimed "We could bear with you when you seemed to be 
mere blackguards and self-regarding fribbles, for then, despite 
your money, you were much as ourselves. But how dare you 
look and be so noble, simply because you alone can afford to 
be so?" 

All this must be borne in mind by those who find astonishing 
the contrast between the "class bitterness" of the early Lloyd 
George and the more kindly and tolerant attitude of the maturer 
statesman. Until comparatively late in life, his financial posi- 
tion was insecure, and he was continually associated with, or in 
opposition to, men whose very income-tax, even on the old 
assessment, would have been esteemed by him a handsome in- 
come. He was not, of course, poorer than many who enter 
parliament. But his expenses, as a married man, were not in- 
definitely compressible; he belonged, not to "the people," but 
to the expensive middle class; his profession could not be very 
conveniently fitted in with parliamentary work ; and he lacked 
the inclination — so clever a man could hardly have remained 
without the opportunity — to take advantage of those means of 
supplementing an income which account for much of the 
attraction the House of Commons offers to penniless 
ambition. A certain class of poor member gravitates naturally 
into the world of company directors and promoters. Another 
automatically finds a way into the better paid kinds of journal- 



46 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

ism. A third picks up commissions of various kinds. Mr. 
George has never seriously divided his interests ; he has always 
been a politician first and foremost. Beyond a certain amount 
of work for the Manchester Guardian (whose cheques he 
found, in his own words, "very pretty," though perhaps rather 
of the mignon order of beauty), he contributed little to the 
newspapers, and his name has rarely appeared in the solemn 
reviews which have never been thought beneath the dignity of 
a statesman. 

While nobody has known better how to use the Press, a 
magnanimity, rare in these days, has prevented Mr. George 
from taking advantage of his position to seek great fees from 
rich newspapers. Some of his colleagues have obtained as 
much as a thousand pounds for three or four articles of a few 
hundred words each. Mr. George, on the other hand, has 
often given for nothing an "interview" which, if printed as an 
article, would readily have commanded a small fortune. It is 
true that he shares this dignified disregard for undignified gain 
with some very lowly people ; Mr. Robert Smillie, for example, 
steadfastly declined to make easy money out of his official 
position. But many men much richer, and still better endowed 
in "traditions" than in cash, have shown less delicacy. 

If journalism, even in his most impecunious days, failed to 
divert Mr. George to any considerable extent from politics he 
had still less inclination to the mysterious world of finance. 
Momentarily he entertained an idea of going to the bar, and 
actually went so far as to enter his name at the Temple. 
Finally, however, he decided to stick to his own branch of the 
law. The steadfast loyalty and affection of his brother William 
enabled him, in spite of long absences in London, to maintain 
his connection with the business at Portmadoc, and he entered 
into partnership in London with a fellow- Welshman, Mr. Rhys 
Roberts. From neither source, however, could his professional 
earnings have been great. 

These facts, of course, cut both ways. Having no division 
of interest such as that of the great barrister-politician, Mr. 
George was able to throw a preponderating share of his energies 
into politics; on the other hand, he was condemned to much 



MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT 47 

from which the possession of an assured income would have 
rendered him exempt. He was in the position of a gambler 
with very little in reserve, who must always risk, but must never 
risk too much, and during the first few years of his parlia- 
mentary life we are conscious of something at once daring and 
tentative. There is always some well defined plan for the im- 
mediate future ; there are always shadowy plans for the distant 
future; there is little or no connection between the two sets of 
plans. He must look ahead, but not too far ahead ; no advance, 
however bold in seeming, can be made without bearing in mind 
the possibilities of retreat; alliances are temporary, and often 
dictated by purely personal considerations; there is a wealth of 
ideas but little trace of fixed principle. A habit persisted in 
for years becomes second nature, and the Prime Minister, like 
the private member, has always tended to meet the daily emer- 
gency by the daily expedient, finding it less trouble to invent a 
new plan than to remember an old philosophy. 

During his first two parliaments Mr. George was a Welsh 
Nationalist first and foremost, and only incidentally a Liberal. 
The question he put within a fortnight of taking his seat was 
ingeniously devised to define his position as especially Welsh, 
Nonconformist, and anti-landlord. Incidentally it established 
him also as the owner of an easily remembered name. A search 
of Hansard fails to discover him under the "G's." He is al- 
ready "Lloyd George." In Public life, all sorts of trifles count, 
and there is a clear advantage in having either one uncommon 
name or two common ones. 

With his already keen sense of tactics the young member 
delayed his maiden speech until a favourable opening occurred. 
A new member can always catch the Speaker's eye once; the 
second opportunity depends on the use he makes of the first. 
Mr. George waited until he had really something to say and a 
good opening for saying it. It was five-twenty-three by the 
clock on June 13, 1890, when he rose first to address the as- 
sembly that he has since so often held under his spell. The 
subject under debate was the Local Taxation (Customs and 
Excise Duties) Bill. Mr. George, as an orthodox member of 
the temperance party, inveighed against certain provisions for 



48 MM. LLOYD CKOUGK 

comjXMisatliij;" llic invnors oi supptcssod iniblio luniso licotiscs. 
A new TiUMiilioi's revoronce tor his coiistituoiits apparoiitly loil 
him to bcs;in by warninj^" tlio i;ovonunoiit that their policy had 
bcou disapproved by the Carnarvonshire Connty rounoil ; it was 
an ox;unplo. ot which parallels were to be founii innch later, oi 
the uncertain action of Mr. Lloytl Geors^e's umleniable sense 
of humour. Hut after the first few halting' sentences he began 
to give his new audience some liint o\ the pmvers which were 
to be si> fiMinidably developed. Never, he declared, had there 
been so piniv an attempt to grapple w ith a great evil "since the 
Lilliputian king drew his hanger to attack Cuilliver." lie 
chatYed Lord Randolph C^hurchill on the evapiMativMi of the 
temperance ardour he hail receiUly displayed; "as with many 
another temjx'rance advocate the hi'ilidays seem to have atTecteil 
his principles." With l.i^rd Randolph he coupled Mr. Cham- 
berlain : — 

The right hon. gentleman not so ver>- long ago — I think it 
was in Wales — pronmlgated the doctrine of ransom. Now, 
if we uiulerstatul that great iKvtrine. it is the exact converse 
of compensation. Hut the right hon. gentleman anil the noble 
lord seem to be a kind of political contortionists, after the 
maimer of the Americati ^ht formers who can set their feet in 
one direction and their faces in another, and no one knows 
which way they ititend to travel. 

The speech lasted seventeen minutes. Though it was not 
exactly disappoiiuing the speaker was no doubt a little dis- 
apjx^inted. The llou->^e was not, as has been so often repre- 
sented. t:iken by storm. The only serious reference to Mr. 
George in subseipieiu debate w as contributed by Mr. Gladstone, 
who said he could "support much that was said so ably by the 
hon. member for Glamorgan. " C^irnarvon was obviously 
meant. Hut the very uncertainty in Mr. Ghulstone's mind is 
elixjuent of the real {X^sitioti of the young member. He was 
only a man from Wales, who had produced a certain effect by 
badinage of the kind which House of Commons taste approves. 
One of the London papers distinguished tlie speech as "rather 
clever," and that was an end of it. 



mkmiu:h of parliament 49 

A livelier sensation was causerl hy an intervention two 
months later in Cfjniniittee on the suj)plcm(.ntary f'ivil Service 
I'.stiniates, In the nineties there was still a decree of sentiment, 
represented a little earlier by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain which, 
if not n-jjublican, was at least anti-royal; and questions of 
grants for ceremonial purposes were rather ungraciously 
scrutinised, ft happened that Prince Henry of Prussia had 
been installer! as a Knight of the Charter at a cost of £439, 3s, 
4(1. 'i'he funeral of the iJuchess of Cambridge harl cost the 
country £180. There was a more considerable item of £2764 
for the e()uijjage of the Irish viceroy. Things like these are not 
the peculiar extravagance of a monarchical government; and, 
inexperiencerl as Mr. Lloyd George then was, he could hardly 
have been unaware that ceremonial plays an important part in 
the life of all civilised states. But it was the fashion of the 
time — the time of Tranby Croft — for vigorous young demo- 
crats to say nasty things about court expenditure. Mr. Lloyd 
George's words were deeply merlitated ; one of his biographers ' 
says, with reference to his description of the viceroy as "simply 
a man in buttons who wears silk stockings and has a coat of 
arms on his carriage," that the phrase "man in buttons" occu- 
pied a special place in his notes. The rest of the speech was in 
the same key. "Thousands of harrl-wf^rking thrifty men are 
living a life of hopeless, ceaseless toil, and yet we are asked 
to spend hundreds in decorating a foreign prince and thousands 
in adorning a mere supernumerary. ... I do not believe that 
all this gorgeousness, and this ostentation of wealth, is neces- 
sary in order to maintain the con.stitution." The criticism of 
the money spent on the Duchess's funeral roused in a special 
degree the ire of the loyalists. Mr. Atkinson, an eccentric 
Lincolnshire member, offered to write a cheque for the sum 
rather than permit it to be profanely debated. The incident 
was just a little more important than it might seem in ret- 
rospect, since it was the beginning of an alliance with the 
robust English Radicals who followed the lead of Mr. Henry 
Labouchere. 

At this period Mr. George was not only carefully violent 

* Mr. H. Duparcq. 



50 INIK. T.LOYl) GEORGE 

but systonuUically ilisrci;ardtul o{ party discipline. Chastised 
by the Liberal press for votinj; in dehaiice of the Whip, ap^ainst 
a Tithes Bill, he declared that he refused for once and all to 
"make mere party the i^od of his idolatry." Yet no less a 
Liberal than Mr. John Morley had discerned in him one who 
woulil be reaily to take in his hand the "lamp of proj^ress" when 
the oUlcv statesmen \vere gone. It was a curious metaphor to 
come from such a ipiarter, for nothing could be less like the 
mild illuminatU of John Stuart Mill than Mr. George's naphtha 
tlaros. b'or the present, however, Mr. George was chieily vio- 
lent against the clergy, the landlords, and the publicans, and 
hail disclosetl little tendency to tlu\so economic heresies which 
would have most shocked Mr. Morley. The clergy at this time 
he attackcil with extraordinary vehemence as "sanctified society 
prigs" and (in the higher ranks) as oppressors whose luxuries 
were ministered to by a "host of menials." 

This studied violence brought him in sharp collision with 
Mr. Gladstone during the last tlays of his first parliament. The 
Clergy niscipline Hill, introduced by a Conservative govern- 
ment, had no more enthusiastic supporter than the aged leader 
of the opposition. It was, moreover, a measure to most people 
so obvimtsly beneficent in its object that it might be thought 
safe from the extreme of partisaji rancour. Its purpose was 
simply to make easier the bishops' task of ridding the church 
of jK'rsi.>ns wlu>. having taken cnclers. had been f(.>und guilty of 
moral olTences, bringing discredit on religion in general and 
on the church in particular. T(.) Mr. George, however, it had 
the aspect of a "liishops' Relief Bill," and to lighten the cares 
of the episcopate was far from his desire. 

It nmst be remembered that Mr. George was then if not him- 
self a fanatic, nmch under the infiuence of fanaticism. He was 
very closely in contact with a state of mind not easily under- 
stood in a huul where theological hatred, like political passions, 
in general, assumes a miUl form. To the Welsh Nonconfonnist 
the Church was represented by the religious press as not merely 
slack and selfish, but actively malignant. Thus a widely circu- 
lateil Baptist organ * could write: — 

•The "Seren." 



MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT 51 

"The history of the Church is scandalous. Her mother was 
a harlot and her father was an adulterer. She grew up an ugly 
and an imperious creature. She persecuterl the Nonconform- 
ists, tortured the philanlliropists, stfjJe fnjrn the ncighhc^urs, 
hanged the innocent, threw the heroes of liberty in gar;!. . . . 
What of her clergy? They are either in their i)arlr;urs smok- 
ing, shr>oting hares in the fields, making ready U)' dance, or 
drinking hot spirits in tap-rooms. What matters it If; them 
if the poor starve? Slaveholders have they been throughout 
the ages." 

Thus a Welsh Calvini.stic Methodist paper of equal stand- 
ing ^ could describe the parsons as "enough to make I'eelzebub 
hide his head for shame, presumptuous and shameless as he is," 
and could declare that the successors of the apostles had nothing 
to learn frr>m TIenry Irving in "wolfisli wrinkling of the brow, 
fierce and angry glances of the eyes, Judas-like showing cjf the 
teeth, and a face of many colours." 

It was natural enmigh that in his capacity of conrlucting rod 
Mr. George should communicate to the J louse of Ojmmons 
something of this frantic heat. In alliance with Mr. S. T. 
Evans (afterwards Prcsiflcnt of the I'rcjbate, Divorce anrl Afl- 
miralty Division) he entered on a virulent opposition to this 
"measure to cheajxjn the process of getting rid of criminous 
clerks." Poor as the case might be, he marie the best of it. 
His .second rearling speech was even more able than bitter, and 
he succeeded in drawing a painfully reluctant tribute from his 
own leafier, "f have no reason to believe that any other mem- 
ber could have made a better case," said Mr. (Gladstone in the 
course of an ai)peal that Mr. George should not "search with 
something of feverish heat for arguments cjf all kinds, in fjrdcr 
to put this Jiill away." Mr. Gladstone's reply to the Wel.sh 
rebel has sometimes been described as a severe castigation. It 
seems to have been rather a j)Iea for mercy on the i)art of a 
very old man who saw something he held holy being trampled in 
the dust. 

In the obstruction to this I'ill Mr. George first appears as a 
leader. Mr. Tom Ellis, the chief of the Welsh group, had little 
' "Y Baner." 



52 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

heart for the business, and the small band of rebels derived their 
^vhale inspiration from the member for Carnarvon Boroughs. 
Mr. George thoroughly enjoyed the experience of having all 
the batteries of the official opposition directed against him — 
the moral glare of Mr. Gladstone, the light raillery of Mr. 
Augustine Birrell, the heavy reproofs of Mr. Campbell-Ban- 
nerman. lie had already come into collision with the party 
leaders by his opposition to the Free Education Bill as a further 
endowment of "The Old Enemy"; in failing to fight it, the 
Liberals. Mr. George thought, had shown "funk," and in this, 
as in kindred matters, he preferred the applause of Wales to 
the unprofitable approval of the Liberal \\'hip. 

When the battle over the Discipline Bill was finished, the 
new^ member had at last made a definite position for himself. 
Sir Charles Dilke had remarked his "ability and business apti- 
tude"; the government had been obliged to take note of him as 
a free lance capable of giving considerable annoyance; the 
oflRcial opposition could never be quite sure what he was going 
to say or do — a great advantage (if not abused) to a private 
member. Outside the Welsh group Mr. George had made a 
few allies. Mr. Labouchere and his friends had been secured 
by the anti-court outburst ; Mr. W. S. Caine and other leaders 
of the temperance party had begun to value his eloquence on 
the platfomi and his powers of offence in the Llouse: and the 
last campaign of obstruction had brought him in close contact 
with a young Scottish Radical, Mr. Henr}^ Dalziel, with whom 
in the future he was destined to maintain a long, close, and 
eminently useful association. It would, however, be still an 
exaggeration to speak of Mr. George as more then a quite 
minor parlianicntar\' figure. Had the election of 1802 gone 
against him it would have been nobody's interest to help hitn 
back to the House, and he had great good fortune in retaining 
the seat against Sir John Puleston by two hundred votes. 

The new House allowed Mr. George far greater opportunties 
than he had so far enjoyed. From being a wholly unimportant 
group the Welsh Nationalists suddenly rose to a position of 
great consequence. The new Liberal government's tenuous 



MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT 58 

majority of forty could only be maintained by the support of 
the "Celtic fringes," and the value of that support mounted 
abruptly. Wales had returned but two Conservative members. 
The attitude of the Welsh Radicals, and indeed of almost every 
individual Welsh Radical, became a vital question. 

The government was in a difficulty over Wales only second 
to its main anxiety of Ireland. Welsh Disestablishment had 
been promised in the Newcastle programme, and there was 
bound to be trouble if no serious attempt were made to imple- 
ment the pledge. On the other hand Mr. Gladstone hated the 
whole business. It was quite a different story from the "ec- 
clesiastical arrangements for Ireland" nearly a quarter of a 
century before. In Ireland the church was very "low," and 
Mr. Gladstone deemed it spiritually dead. In Wales he per- 
ceived both life and grace abounding. It is probable, also, that 
Mr. Gladstone was less sympathetic to the Welsh dissenters 
than to the Irish Roman Catholics; the latter were of course 
gravely in error, but they did not offend his taste : his taste and 
his theological bias were both ranged aginst the Welsh de- 
mand. Finally, he was very old, and Welsh Disestablishment, 
as getting in the way of Home Rule, was quite simply a 
nuisance. 

But how to shelve the question without alienating the all- 
important Welsh members? The Ministry had a happy in- 
spiration. By bringing into the government Mr, Tom Ellis, 
the "cottage-bred" leader of Welsh democracy and Noncon- 
formity, the Principality would be flattered and its chief spokes- 
man would be gagged. The offer was made ; in an incautious 
moment Mr. Ellis accepted it; and in doing so destroyed his 
own power and gave Mr. George the first great opportunity of 
his life. Henceforth, without a suspicion of self-seeking or, 
disloyalty to a highly popular chief, he could pursue tcT'its 
logical conclusion the policy he had determined oxi. He could 
be the "Parnell of Wales." ^ " 

For a time he went on quietly. When in 1893 the govern- 
ment introduced a Welsh Church Suspensory Bill, designed to 
stop the creation of further vested interests in the church in 
Wales, he described the second reading debate as "good fun," 



54 INIH. LLOVD CKOUGE 

and indeed he must have been prodigiously heartened by Sir 
John Gorst's quaint defence of the Kstabhshtnent as "not 
an unmixed evil." But he did tiot take the measure very 
sericnisiy. and was content to wait Mr. Gladstone's retirement 
before beginning business in earnest. In iho I lome Rule debate 
he iook no share; in view of the \\'elsh idolatry for Mr. Glad- 
stone he ciuild not safely criticise the Hill; in view of his own 
preference iov the "federal solution," he probably preferred 
not to commit himself to a plan plainly docMued to disaster. 
Much might happen before the Irish tiuestitui next arose, and, 
though Mr. George has never hesitatcil when necessary to go 
back on his past professions, he has seldom needlessly multi- 
plied the occasions for doing so. 

With the old lion's departure our cautious Daniel could 
'Mare to stand alone" — ov nearly so. In view of the Welsh 
idolatry, serimis revolt against Mr. (iladstone had been c»ut of 
the cpiestion; Wales might enjoy the spectacle of one of her 
sons making even the ancient chieftain a little uncomfortable 
over Disestablishment, but the precipitation of a real crisis 
would have been fatal ti> the plotter. Mr. Gladstone's govern- 
ment was safe so long as Mr. Gladstone remained. But Lord 
Roseber)''s government enjoyed no such imnuinity; he was a 
young statesman, a peer, ati owner of race-horses, a Laodicean 
antl perhaps worse. In any well founded quarrel with the new 
prime minister, Mr. George might depend on a large Welsh 
following, and so far he had scarcely begun to think of any 
followitig that was not Welsh. 

His attitude of contingent rebellion was decisively taken up 
the moment Mr. Gladstone resigiied. When Mr. Asquith in- 
troduced a Disestablishment Rill in the spring of 1804 ^^r. 
Lloyd George refused to receive the party whip. It was not 
tlie Bill to which he objected. The Bill was in its main lines 
what he and his f rieiuls hatl demanded. But it couKl not in the 
circumstances be taken seriously. It was not meant to be car- 
ried ; he saw it as simply "a plan to keep Welsh votes." In that 
belief Mr. Lloyd George was willing to become little more than 
a ^xirty of one in the House ; his real audience, then as ever, was 
the country, and in tliis case the country was Wales. There 



MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT 55 

began to be a great deal of talk about a Young Wales party ; 
and Lord Rosebery, despite the disapproval of Sir William 
Harcourt, was screwed up to a definite pledge that before 
Parliament was dissolved the Disestablishment Bill should be 
forced through the Commons. When the measure was again 
produced in 1895 in accordance with this undertaking Mr. 
Lloyd George declared that if not all he could wish, it was 
capable of improvement, and he maintained his interest through 
the sittings in committee. On one of his amendments the 
government would have been defeated had he not relented at 
the last moment, and Mr. Asquith's concessions to the Church 
party were hotly resented. One important amendment was 
accepted by the government, placing the control of the Welsh 
tithe in the hands of an elected Welsh council instead of a body 
of appointed bureaucrats. This was held to be a valuable 
admission of Welsh nationality, and, having secured it, Mr. 
Lloyd George retired to his mountains to proclaim the triumph, 
and to rally the electors, who, as a recent by-election had shown, 
were beginning to turn to Conservatism in sheer disgust over 
the impotence of parliamentary Liberalism. 

When the Rosebery government was defeated on the cordite 
resolution, Mr. Lloyd George and several of his associates were 
absent unpaired. Reproaches he met with hardy impenitence. 
Internal dissensions, he said, had brought the ministry to ruin, 
and he left it to be inferred that what had to be so painfully 
kept alive was better dead. 

Indeed, whatever the misfortunes of the Liberal party, he 
had no reason to take them tragically. Plis own reputation 
had constantly risen during the troubled interlude. Mr. Tom 
Ellis, soon to be removed by death, had even now ceased to be 
a serious force in Wales; Mr. D. A. Thomas, with all his 
wealth and influence, was manifestly in a secondary position; 
Sir George Osborne Morgan, the chairman of the party, was 
physically broken. Mr. Lloyd George had only to wait and play 
his cards adroitly. Five years in parliament had brought him 
within reach of the political dictatorship of the Principality. 
At Westminster, it is true, he remained merely one of the more 



5Q MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

interesting of the lesser personalities. "A young man," wrote 
an acute observer,^ "who speaks well by natural aptitude, and 
has plenty of self-assertion with boundless persistence and in- 
sistence. . . . He does not seem to carry weight with the 
Liberal party, nor has he, so far, found his way to the esteem 
of the House at large." In English eyes he was still little more 
than a fresh Celtic complication. The English Nonconformists 
had begun to look on him as an ally of some value; the temper- 
ance party had welcomed him on their platforms. But there 
was no general recognition of a new force in wider matters. 

That he should succeed in England it was necessary that Mr. 
Lloyd George should first fail in Wales. He was spoken of at 
this time as the "Parnell of Wales." But the phrase ill defined 
his position. With small means and an increasing family he 
could not take the risks, and therefore could not grasp the gains, 
of Parnell. The next few years were to prove the failure of 
his scheme for the leadership of a united Wales, and in doing 
so to prepare the greater success. Meanwhile, if he had not 
achieved mastery in his own country he had at least 
achieved a resounding reputation. From the defence of 
poachers he had risen to the defence of Welsh Nonconfomiity 
and Welsh democracy. He had defied Gladstone. He had 
mocked at the idols of English Toryism. He had refused to 
be tied to the car of the dominant race, with whatever party 
colours it might be decked. He had snapped his fingers at 
royalty itself. When the Liberal government had offered 
Wales a boon, he had looked at it as coolly as a horse-coper 
looks at a hack, criticised it. and finally declared it not good 
enough. 

London might call him still a provincial figure, and in truth 
London was right — he was quite provincial. But he was at 
Westminster not in the spirit of the admiring rustic, awed and 
submissive, but rather in that of some fierce young barbarian 
who, in Imperial Rome, surveyed the magnificence which was 
to be his own, and wore his sheepskin as if it were already the 
purple. 

* Sir Richard Temple. 



CHAPTER IV 

WELSH NATIONALISM 

IN the election of 1895, so generally disastrous to Liberalism, 
Mr. George was fortunate enough to retain his seat against 
Mr. Ellis Nanney by a majority only slightly less than that of 
1892. 

He had promised to be in the new parliament "a thorn in 
the side of Mr. Balfour," and in some degree the pledge was 
fulfilled. But it has never been his habit to give unnecessary 
time to the House of Commons; few statesmen of his standing 
have shown so little affection for that assembly, or have con- 
trived to produce at so small a cost of exertion the effect of 
a great parliamentarian. With a Unionist government 
strongly entrenched, with an opposition rent by every kind of 
dissension, with the raising of questions, Colonial and Imperial, 
in which he as yet took little interest, parliamentary work was 
now less than ever likely to absorb his full energies. From 
1895 to the outbreak of the Boer War Mr. Lloyd George's 
main interest was his position in Wales. At Westminster he 
appeared chiefly in the part of a guerrilla skirmisher; in his 
own country he was occupied in a distinctly constructive policy, 
which, though it failed, was not ill designed to give him the 
authority of a dictator. 

Wales, by tradition and to some extent in fact, is divided 
into two halves, North and South, and for political purposes 
each half had its own Liberal organisation. That of the rich 
and progressive South had for many years been a model of 
efficiency, and in the eighties and early nineties it had shown 
itself not only ardently Radical but eminently patriotic. The 
North Wales Liberal Federation was, on the other hand, ineffi- 
cient, Whiggish, and so dead to national sentiment that its 
meetings were often held on English soil, sometimes at Shrews- 

67 



58 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

bury, sometimes at Chester, railway convenience being generally 
the decisive factor. 

Mr. George, long before he entered parliament, had pro- 
tested against this state of things, and had advocated the fusion 
of the two bodies into a National League. But whenever any 
institution is suggested for Wales as a whole strife invariably 
follows as to headquarters. Cardiff on account of its size and 
wealth, is always suggested by the South. The historic claims 
of Carnarvon, Bangor, and other small cities are as eagerly 
pressed by the Northerners, Attempts at compromise are 
doomed to failure, as was proved when Aberystwith was chosen 
as the educational centre of the Principality; neither section has 
ever been satisfied. The want of a metropolis was, and is,*a 
serious check to Welsh Nationalism. 

Since the idea of the National League shattered on this rock, 
Mr. George set about improving the efficiency of the Northern 
organisation. This was accomplished by the simple process of 
killing the North Wales Federation, and putting in its place 
a body hopefully called the Welsh National Council. Fully to 
justify its title, however, the South Wales Federation had to 
be put out of the way, and as a matter of courtesy it was in- 
vited to commit seppuku. To such Japanese self-sacrifice the 
good people of the South objected. They saw no reason why 
they should submit themselves to a parcel of country lawyers 
and tenant farmers, and in proportion as nationalism grew in 
the North it declined in the South. When Mr. George first 
went to the House of Commons, "Home Rule for Wales" was 
a more popular cry in the southern counties than in his own 
Boroughs. Six or seven years later the position was reversed. 
North Wales was rather pronouncedly nationalist. South 
Wales was getting steadily more anglicised in fact, if not in 
profession. And in Mr. D. A. Thomas (afterwards Lord 
Rhondda) it had a leader little inclined to narrow nationalistic 
views. A citizen of the world, with interest in every part of 
the kingdom and many parts of the globe, he was not likely 
to think in terms of "Wales for the Welsh," and his attitude 
to all intensification of nationality, whether linguistic or other- 
wise, could only be unsympathetic. To him the Welsh language 



WELSH NATIONALISM 59 

seemed simply an obstacle to progress, and the suggestion of 
nationalism merely bad business. Nationalism flourishes best 
in a light soil. Where there is great wealth what is not im- 
perialism tends to internationalism. 

Mr. Thomas, therefore, became by force of circumstances 
pitted against his former colleagues, and even for Mr. George 
he was no mean antagonist. He had on his side money, the 
authority of a great employer, and a capacity rare in business 
men for politics. Almost alone among the business men called 
in under the Coalition government of 191 6, he showed himself 
equal to his task. On Disestablishment he had stood shoulder 
to shoulder with Mr. George, but along the road to Nationalism 
indicated by designs to destroy the South Wales Liberal Fed- 
eration he would not go, and in 1897 he withdrew from the 
Welsh Parliamentary Party, in which, however, his influence 
remained. In the same year died Sir George Osborne Morgan, 
and an attempt was made to secure the vacant chairmanship 
for Mr. George, his name being proposed by Mr. Reginald 
McKenna, a recently elected Monmouthshire member, destined 
to great office in a future Liberal government. A contest 
seemed likely, but Mr. George withdrew in favour of Mr. 
Alfred Thomas, afterwards Lord Pontypridd. 

In 1899 came the real trial of strength on the death of Mr. 
Tom Ellis. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the new Liberal 
leader, had offered to appoint another Welsh member to his 
place at the Liberal Whips' office. Mr. George now made a bid 
to establish a real Parnellism in Wales, bringing forward a reso- 
lution for the formation of an independent party oh the Irish 
model. It is fascinating to speculate what might have happened 
had he gained the day. Had the connection with English 
liberalism been broken, there was no other possible leader, and 
Wales must have henceforth claimed him. But these things 
were not to be. His resolution was burked by a temporising 
amendment, inspired by Mr. D. A. Thomas ; and though no 
knock-out blow was given Mr. George was beaten on points. 
Thus the late Lord Rhondda must (under Providence) be 
credited with having definitely filched David Lloyd George from 
Wales and given him to mankind. Five months later the Boer 



00 



MH. M.OVl) (,K()1U;K 



W'ar tluusi tlu' liitiuc rtiiuo Minislcr into (lie thick of iiupcMial 
aiul iiitoniatioiial oiuitrovcrsy. aiul at llio imuI of tlio war ho was 
ill only a restricted sonso a Welsh leader. 1 lenceforwanl Wales 
trmaitis in his |>eriMatii>ns ; Wales continues his own electoral 
appanai^e, his political f't'culium. TmU Wales no longer gives 
hitn a iletinite political inspiration. 



Mr. (KVMge's gcneial activities during this period may he 
rapidly revieweil. In iSo(> we lind him wituung Sir William 
llarciMUt's ci>ngratulati(Mis for his wimU \\\ (Opposition to the 
Agricultural Relief ImII. Oi all the young men on the l.iheral 
side, we are toUl.' he made the greatest mark dining this ses- 
sion. Not on\\ did he defy the .Sjvaker and hring upiMi himself 
a week's suspension, hut he cliarged the government with hone- 
titing hy its own legislati(^n to the extent of t"s(>.ooo a year; 
Mr. Henry (afterwards X'iscmint) diaplin. who intrtHluced the 
Uill. wmild. he said, he {."700 better otT under it. Indignant 
denials were hrushed aside. "Taking the cajutal value of the 
kitul." .<aid Mr. (uH>rge. "the Ministry would henetit under the 
ImU lo the extent oi two and a quarter millions. Having hleil 
the farmer to the last drop o\ his hlooil, the landmvuers are 
now going to bleed the taxpayers, who are to be drawn into 
their leech pond." The business has a certain signiticance. l-'or 
the t'lrst time it brought Mr. (uH^rge fullv into line with the 
F.nglish Radicals, aiul it even foreshaili>wed "The Peoj^le's 
Budget." 

The next year he distingui.^hed himself by a most acri- 
monious oppi->sition to a X'oluutary Schools Hill. A Conserva- 
tive member - records that the attack was conducted almost 
entirely by Welsh members wlio showed an ingenuity only 
eiiualled by their "rancorous hostility to the C^hurch." .\mong 
them he distinguishes Mr. CKH>rge as vicing with auv iov 
**ability and bitterness" and "certainly taking the palm for vio- 
lence of language." Indeeil this excess was oiicn depUtred by 

* Ry a writer \\\ tlio /"'di/y ('/i»<>hi<7i". 

* Mr. (.ni^^^v Sir't .Vrthur GritVuh Iniscnvcti, "b\nirtoon Vo.irs in r.uli.i- 
niotvt." 



VVKLSir NATIONALISM fJl 

"many of his friends whf; recognised his remarkable parlia- 
mentary gifts, and admired the pluck and grit which he had 
displayerl since he entererj the House." 'i'here was a further 
oppf^rtnnify ff^r the militant Nonconformist in the Benefices 
liill of 1H9H, although the sole object of the measure was to 
check the ancient sin of simrmy; and in fH(/j, on the second 
reading of the 'J ithe Kent-charge C Kates) Jiill, Mr. George 
made what was, perhaps, the most efifective sfxrech he had so 
far delivered in the ffouse of Commrjns. After drawing in- 
dignant exclamations by a sharp attack on a country parson, 
he retorted : — 

"J do not see why these gentlemen shouM be spared. They 
are coming here to ask for £87,000 at the ex|x.'nse of the [>eopIe, 
who are suffering in many cases far more than they are, and it 
is high time the facts were stated about them. 'J hey are not 
taxed on their professional income. The point has been macJe 
over and over again that the maintenance of the poor was a 
tax upon the tithe, 'i hat has been challenged. Of course it 
was imposed in the first instance for the maintenance of the 
poor. We hear a good deal in these days about the opinion of 
the Fathers of the Church. It is always quoted wherever there 
is a question of ritual. One of these holy fathers wrote 'You 
jKiy tithes for Gofl's f^hurch; let the priest divide them into 
three; one part for the repairs of the C^hurch, the second part 
for the poor, and the third for God's servant.' What has 
become of the poor's third part? At the present moment they 
are getting 2/- in the £, or a tenth (through the rates) whereas 
fr>rnierly it was a thirrl, or six and eighti>ence. Now they say 
a tenth is too much; 'we should only pay a twentieth.' The 
leathers of the CJhurch may be good enough for quotation to 
justify a breach of tiie law in regard to extravagant ritual, but 
when it is a questifjn of fulfilling the obligations imposerl by 
them, the I'^atliers of the CJhurch are thrown overbfjarrl anrl "the 
King V. Jodreir is brought in instead." 

Hatred to landlordism — and perhaps another feeling — was 
revealed in the opposition to Mr. Gerald Balfour's Irish Local 
Government Bill. The average Liberal, and especially the 
I'ront Bench Liberal, saw good reason to leave this measure 



62 ^iK. LLOVi) c;kc)iu;k 

aloiio. sitK'o all the Irish wore in its lavonr. rartiollito. anti- 
raruellitc. aiul even lush Ihiionist had no objection to some 
hnnihecis t>f thonsaiuls oi {xunuls i^oini; into the latullords' 
pockets; were not latuUiMils ;jJso Irishmen? Mr. Cleori;e, fail- 
in;: lo incite the Irish avrainst the l^ill. tinaliv threatened them. 
It they were to be deal to the tunes of the Welsh harp could 
thev expect Welshmen to dance to the music of that which c>nce 
sonniled in Tara's halls? The Irish strongly resented a resolu- 
tion moved under Mr. Ckhm'^c's inllncnce in favinn- oi "Home 
Rule All Routul," which in their opinion meant ituletinite 
post|HMKMnent of Irish llome Rule. 

\\\M-se was to follow. In the be^innins;- i>f iSoJ Mr. Georgv 
speakinj; im the .\ddress. protested ai^ainst the idea of setting 
up a Roman I'atholic I'niversity for Ireland; NonciMiformists, 
he said, were determined lo i^pposo. from whatever quarter it 
might come, a university (.\itholic in tone and atmosphere. 
This attitude might seem peculiar in one who professed self- 
ileterinination in matters of religion. T^ut reference must be 
hail to the jvculiar atmosphere in which Mr. Ca'orge was reared, 
and to the intluences still strcnig on him. About this time a 
Noticonformist periodical widely circulated in Wales could 
write concerning (.'atholicistu,^ "It is well known that Ropery is 
a comiHMulium of all the cruelties, abominations and disgraceful 
corruptions that ever crosse«.l the threslutld of the Devil's abode. 
Hells of pandemonium rang merrily when the system was es- 
tablished, ami in every chamber of hell there was dancing and 
gfaiety. The sole ditYerence between the C'hurches of iMigland 
and of Rome is that the former is the tail and the latter is the 
head." 

Tt nmst be remembercil that ^Ir. Tdoyd George was still in 
the closest touch with friends and relatives to whom such 
langniagf would not seem exaggerative. His mother had dieil 
in 1806, but his uticle contituietl to write him almost daily letters 
in which spiritual admoiushment jostled quaintly with shrewd 
practical advice. It was thus natural that he should have 
little iti comtnon with the Irish Nationalists. .V political 
conviction — and Mr. Lloyd George's attachment to the cause 

*"Y. Baner." 



WELSH NATIONALISM 03 

of Irish Home Rule seems to have been always rather languid — 
can never have the strength of a religious prejudice, and though 
Mr. IJoyd George sat near the Irish, and often addressed the 
House from the very corner seat made famous by Mr. Tim 
Healy, there was probably no member more spiritually remote 
from almost everything for which the Irish members stood. 

On the personal side, it is interesting to note his removal 
during this fxrriod from Central London to the suburbs. After 
early resiflence in Gray's Inn and the Temple, the obvious 
refuges of a bird of passage, he had taken more permanent 
quarters in Kensington. liut in 1899 the growing family of 
the Georges compelled another move, and a "desirable villa 
residence," was chosen in Koulh Road, Wandsworth Common. 
This hegira had a meaning not to be overlooked. The still 
young politician was fighting three separate battles. There 
was the battle for a firm hold on Wales, and that could never 
be long neglected. There was the battle for recognition in the 
House of Commons, which had sometimes to be intermitted, 
as being for the moment, of the least impcjrtance. Finally 
there was the battle for bread-and-butter. This, partaking of 
the sullen character of trench warfare, was the most formidable 
of all. It was won, as we know, and the bitter struggle did 
not altogether j^rohibit an occasional relaxation, such as the 
trip to the Argentine in 1896 and the Canadian tour in which 
Mr, George was engaged when the Boer War broke out. But 
the strategic retreat to Wandsworth suggests that the event 
might easily have been otherwise, and that the spirit of the 
adventurer might have been broken, or perhaps hopelessly em- 
bittered, by an indefinite prolongation of the triple struggle for 
bread, fame and independence. From such a fate Mr. George 
was saved by the great adventure which, first threatening his 
complete ruin, ended by placing him in a position in which his 
great talents could not be denied full scope. 



CHAPTER V 



THE BOER WAR 



WHO made the Boer War it is not for the present writer 
to discuss. For the present purpose it is sufficient to 
note that the Boer War made Mr. Lloyd George. Before it 
he was merely a parHamentary figure, amusing or annoying 
while he was there, certain to be forgotten the moment he lost 
his seat. At the end of it he was a political power — a man who 
might be hated, mistrusted, or feared, but must always be 
taken into calculation. More important still, he could no longer 
be conceived as a mere self-seeker. Over many distinguished 
men of his own party he had established a moral supremacy 
by the mere fact that, while they had played a game which, 
however honourable, was safe and popular, he had risked 
all, and suffered much, for the assertion of a principle. By his 
opponents he might be denounced as a profligate minister, an 
unscrupulous demagogue, and (in moments of imaginative en- 
feeblement) a "little Welsh solicitor." But it could not be 
added that he was a pure opportunist. 

That much established, it was no disadvantage that he should 
acquire the reputation of a shrewd and somewhat cynical judge 
of opportunities. In our politics the man who obviously and 
consistently plays for his own hand commands little permanent 
influence; the man of rigid principle rarely attains it in the 
highest degree. The action of both is too easily calculable. 
The House of Commons likes principle, but not too much of it; 
so long as there is enough to keep a character sweet, the little 
more is not wanted. The greatest power is always wielded by 
the genuinely able man whose attitude can never be precisely 
foretold, who will sometimes consent to be bent "like a good 
bilbo, hilt to point, heel to head," but will on occasion take his 
stand firmly and risk all for something he believes vital. Mr. 

64 



THE BOER WAR 65 

Gladstone's domination would not have been so complete had 
he been gifted only with the moral fervour of Bright; he was 
also, to an extent now half forgotten, the "old parliamentary 
hand." 

It has always been a great advantage to Mr. George that no 
colleague, no opponent, no party could tell quite how far he 
would go or what he was prepared to sacrifice, how much he 
believed in his own measures or his own leaders, in what degree 
at any particular moment he would be swayed by a generous 
emotion or influenced by his highly developed electioneering 
instincts. Those who knew him intimately were of course 
aware that, in his earlier years, he was moved by a quite genu- 
ine passion for the betterment of the lot of the poor. But the 
House of Commons and the public had no means of judging 
his sincerity on this or any other point until the Boer War had 
proved that this politician, flexible and dexterous in the manner 
most to be suspected, had on one subject at least a strength of 
conviction enabling him to face ruin without a tremor. If on 
one subject, why not on another? By common accord Mr. 
George's ministerial colleagues in the days of his greatness 
treated his action during the Boer War as if it were the early 
police-court incident in the life of a reformed character. His 
enemies, on the other hand, never tired themselves (whatever 
the case with their audiences) in raking up this part of his past. 
Both were unwise. The more the public was reminded of these 
transactions the more it was inclined to give Mr. George credit 
for pluck and sincerity. He had opposed the majority of the 
nation when he believed it to be in the wrong. Could he be 
regarded merely as a schemer and flatterer when he and the 
nation happened to be in accord ? 

Such was the great gain in moral weight which Mr. George 
could set against some thirty months of incessant anxiety, some 
danger, and vast unpopularity. Yet at the beginning of the war 
it looked as if he were to lose all and gain nothing, as if he 
were to earn for ever the least desirable of all reputations — 
that of a politician who seeks purely personal and party advan- 
tage from a great national emergency. The outbreak of hos- 
tilities had divided the Liberal party into two hostile camps, 



66 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

between which flitted restless and timorous folk definitely 
committed to neither. On the one side were Lord Rosebery, 
Mr. Asqiiith, Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Haldane. Sir Edward 
(afterwards Viscount) Grey, and other "Liberal Imperialists"; 
on the other a definitely "Stop-the-War" faction, a strangely 
assorted body in which agnostic cynics like Mr. Henry La- 
bouchere rubbed shoulders with the softer spirits of Noncon- 
formity. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, on whom had fallen 
the ungrateful task of "leading" a party which for the most 
part declined to be led, at first inclined to a middle course, with 
which Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Morley were in general 
agreement. Critical of the diplomacy leading up to the war, 
Sir Henry conceived that the Boer invasion of Natal made it 
impossible for those who were in the main sympathetic with 
the South African Republic to decline aid to the government. 
Mr. George at first took a line which, while it associated him 
with the Stop-the-W'ar group, was essentially his own. His 
first speech was not mainly concerned to attribute unnecessary 
aggressiveness to the Colonial Office or lack of scruple to its 
agents. It was not even a plea for a small and pastoral people, 
obstinate in their pride of race, who might be recommended to 
British magnanimity. It was, in its most salient passages, 
simply an appeal to party feeling and class prejudice. The bit- 
terest references were made to the purely domestic conduct of 
the Government. By its Agricultural Relief Act and its Irish 
local Government Act ^ it had, Mr. George declared, "divided 
three millions of money among its own supporters," and par- 
ticularly among its supporters in the House of Lords. That 
House was a Chamber for which no native-born Briton had 
a right to vote, and therefore a far closer body than the Trans- 
vaal Volksraad. in respect of which Mr. Chamberlain was de- 
manding electoral privileges for the L^itlander. That such a 
government and such a chamber should be spending millions 
to enforce "a pure and honest administration in the Transvaal" 
was, he held, absurd and monstrous. 

This irrelevant acidity explains much of the special feeling 
against Mr. George. The war was popular, and none who 
*See Chapter IV. 



THE BOER WAR 67 

withstood the tide of national feeling could expect much con- 
sideration. Yet the public did make certain rough distinc- 
tions, and it at once imparted a quite peculiar severity to its 
disapproval of Mr. George's attitude. lie was denounced next 
day in The Times for his speech and his vote against the pro- 
vision of money for the war. He was accused of wishing to 
"leave British soldiers to be shot in South Africa." Of course 
Mr. George wished no such thing; he would not have left our 
soldiers "naked to their enemies," but would presumably have 
got rid of the enemies by the simple process of making peace. 
In doing so, of course, he might conceivably have left the whole 
of South Africa to Paul Kruger, and on that count a quite 
reasonable indictment could have been framed against him. 
But such confusion of thought is pardonable. If Mr. Swin- 
burne, in the seclusion of his Putney villa, could write of the 
Boers as "hell-hounds foaming at the jaws," it is not surprising 
that some one, in the bustle of Printing-House-Square, should 
take up the first stick that came handy in order to chastise the 
audacious pro-Boer. Mr. George had invited a thunderbolt of 
some kind. If Jove smote him with the wrong one he at least 
had no great reason to complain. 

When parliament rose after its short sitting Mr. George 
proceeded to expound his peculiar evangel of peace to his fel- 
low-Welshmen. At Carmarthen in November he declared that 
"there was not a lyddite shell which burst on the African hills 
which did not carry away an Old Age Pension." Indeed this 
"early bad manner" teemed with appeals to self-interest and 
class feeling, which merely enraged the people they were in- 
tended to seduce. The British masses, when profoundly moved, 
are little inclined to the arguments of Mammon, "the least 
erected spirit that fell," who in Milton's epic gave his counsel 
against war, 

Admiring more 
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold, 
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific. 

The mistake, however, was not long continued. In a 



(>8 MR. LLOYD GEOKGE 

few weeks Mr. George, exalted by his own enthusiasm, and 
perhaps also conscious of the futility of such arguments, 
emitted an altogether higher note, from which, in spite of nuich 
personal bitterness, there was in future no grievous descent. 
His speech at Oxford in the first month of 1900 was elevated 
in diction and not ignoble in theme. The pedlar logic, if not 
entirely absent, was less crudely expressed; the ordinary 
pacifistic arguments were stated with an eloquence to be sought 
in vain elsewhere; and there was besides a quality of breadth 
and statesmanship in the speech which was henceforth to be 
peculiarly associated with Mr. George; it is to be found in no 
other Liberal opponent of the war. In considering this change 
of tone, it is necessary to remember one thing in order to avoid 
an injustice to a statesman peculiarly liable to misjudgiuent. 
It would be simple to say that a cynical Welsh adventurer, 
finding himself on the wrong tack, suddenly put about and went 
on another course, hoping that, since he must in any case be 
unpopular, he would acquire a reputation for nobility and dis- 
interestedness. But such things with such a man do not happen 
so. Apart from his enormous sensitiveness, for good and evil, 
to popular opinion. Mr. George was himself in the midst of a 
process of self -education. It was the first time he had been 
called upon to decide, in a position of some responsibility, or 
at least of some elevation, on more than a local or sectional 
issue. On questions of tactics, on minor matters of concrete 
business, his brain is quick, clear, and decisive ; in great things 
he seems to act on inspiration rather than as the result of any 
conscious process of thought: and it often happens that in the 
uninspired intervals neither his views, nor the manner of their 
expression, are worthy of the occasion. 

This api^ears to be the explanation of his failure in iSqg. 
Faced suddenly with a tremendous fact, to which his instinct 
urged a certain attitude, he foimd inspiration lacking, while 
his unassisted reason gTOped round for arg^mients. and could 
find few but those which had served him often in smaller quar- 
rels. At last the iTispiration arrived, and thenceforward he 
was distinguished from the rest of the so-called pro-Boers by 
an outlook which was not Welsh, or English, or British, but 



THE BOER WAR 69 

wider even than European. It was an outlook exceedingly ex- 
asperating to his countrymen, but as time went on the average 
citizen was obliged to take it into account, simply because it 
represented the outlofjk of the non-British world. The English 
pro-Boers, concentrating on the supposed errors of Mr. Cham- 
berlain, Sir Alfred Milner, Mr. Rhodes, and Dr. Jameson, 
were plainly beside the mark; was Paul Kruger without blem- 
ish; were all the other Boers without guile or warlike intent? 
Every unprejudiced person saw it was not so, and that the 
origin of the war was a very mixed matter. Mr. George, as 
the son of a small nation, perceived, so soon as he had col- 
lected his thoughts, that if any true indictment were to be 
framed against the British Government, it could not rest on 
counts manufactured out of Blue-books. Quite unconsciously 
he took almost precisely the line of an article contributed, in 
his capacity of candid friend, by M. Brunetiere to an English 
review : — 

"Que valent exactement les griefs des Boers? Et que valent 
ceux des Anglais? Quelle est I'origine de la guerre actuelle? 
Et de qui, de M. Chamberlain ou de M. Kruger, eut-il dependu 
d'en epargner I'horreur au monde? Toutes ces questions, ou 
je comprends tres bien que les Anglais s'acharnent, interessent 
peu I'opinion frangaise. L'opinion frangaise ne veut voir et ne 
voit en effet qu'une chose : a la fin d'un siecle qui s'appellera 
dans I'histoire le siecle du reveil ou de la renaissance des na- 
tionalites, et, par consequent, ou le grand crime politique, le 
grand crime international, est detruire une nationalite, c'est ce 
que les Anglais n'ont pas craint d'entreprendre." • 

Nationality in Wales being comparatively untouched by 
imperialism, Mr. George was then well qualified to present 
this side of the case. Whilst the Englishman was quite ready, 
as a matter of patriotic duty, to fight for any Johannesburg 
adventurer who wrapped himself in a Union Jack, there were 
at least a good many in Wales, as well as three-quarters of the 
population of Ireland, who took the Continental point of view, 
and sympathised with the Dutch just because they were fight- 
ing to remain Dutch. Mr. George was therefore the most in- 



70 MR. l.LOVl) (JKOIUU^: 

tcUi^otit mouth piece oi a real but little represented public, 
ami whenever he spoke in this sense, his ailvocacy ceaseil to be 
merely elever ami attaineil true ilii^iiity. His earlier tone was 
never sutliciently tori;otten ilmiiii; the war to obtain him l\>r- 
^iveness; his later tone permitted him. on a calm review of the 
case, to be inehuled amons; those who have braved the extreme 
of unpopularity in defence of a threat principle. Hut in Wales, 
evei\ dnrint;' the war. though he mii;ht be hustletl occasionally, 
as in his own constituency at Hangor. he could win applause 
when, emphasisini; the racial issue, he declared that "Race is 
deeper than relij;icMi." 

In the far less friendly atmosphere of the House of Com- 
mons he couKl also maintain the cause of nationality against 
imperialism in words which did not lack nobility. The annex- 
ation of the Republic gave him a great opportunity. On July 
J5, \i.)oo, he associated himself with a motion of censure moved 
by Sir Wilfrid Lawson : — 

"We went into the war" (he said) "for equal rights; we 
are prosecuting it for annexation. . . . The Colonial Secre- 
tary said that a war in order to impose internal reforms on 
Presiilent Kruger would be an immoral war. If that be so T 
ask the right honourable gentleman or any of his friends to 
find an ailjective sutTicieinly expressive o( the character of a 
war entered on (or the jinqxise oi amiexation. 'Fhe right 
honourable gentleman admittetl that we had no right to meddle 
in the atTairs of the Transvaal, anil that there was only one 
possible justification — that our motive was unselfish. We 
have thrown that justification away. Ft is exactly as if you 
had entered a man's hmise to protect the children and started 
to steal his plate. In changing the purpose of the war you have 
made a bad change. Our foreign critics say you are not going 
to war for equal rights, but to get hold of the gold-tields, and 
von have justitieil the criticism by this change." 

Tn this speech — which had not the countenance of the official 
opposition — Mr. George shows for the first time the instinct 
of a statesman. It was the fashion of the moment to glory in 
our "magiiiticent isolation." For suggesting that the goodwill 



THE BOER WAR 71 

of Europe was something to be considered Mr. George was 
called a traitor, but soon after the statesmen in office were 
entirely converted to his point of view, though their crude 
attempts to buy a measure of Continental friendship would, if 
not happily frustrated by events, have placed Great Britain 
in a far more humiliating position than that contemplated by 
the most infatuated pro-Boer. The country, however, was in 
no mood to listen to such arguments, any more than to sugges- 
tions that the war might have been avoided. If the Boers werie 
"hell-hounds foaming at the jaws" the obvious thing was to 
shoot them, and not to inquire nicely into the original cause of 
hydrophobia. The only fact the public regarded was that Mr. 
George had spoken against victory, and that Mr. Chamberlain 
stood for a triumphant peace. There were in essence only two 
voices that rose above the confusion of tongues. The one was 
that of Joseph Chamberlain, in which the war-spirit of the 
people was epitomised. Loud, fierce, relentless, he was heard 
from end to end of the Empire, and throughout Europe. The 
single significant interruption came, less loud but astonishingly 
shrill, from the member for Carnarvon Boroughs. 

It needed high courage for a young and unestablished man 
to engage, night after night, an antagonist so formidable as 
Mr. Chamberlain in the height of his power and popularity. 
Even in the hour of final defeat, and with the shadow of physi- 
cal breakdown on him, Mr. Chamberlain commanded a power 
of invective so ferocious as to shatter permanently the nerves 
of the softer kind of antagonist. In the Boer War days, con- 
scious that he was the national idol as well as the dictator of 
the Cabinet, he was scarcely less wounding than Chatham ; he 
could make proud men cringe and stout men quail almost at a 
gesture, and the effect of some of his speeches was almost that 
of a physical flogging. A giant's strength he used like a giant. 
Kindly in his private relations, he had as little chivalry as ten- 
derness in dealing with political enemies, showed no hesitation 
in attributing the least worthy motives to opponents, and never 
shrank from inciting popular frenzy against them. Mr. 
George, who resembles him in so many ways, has shown some- 
thing of the same incapacity for generosity to the fallen foe 



72 ISIH. IJ.OVD CKOUCK 

(utiloss it is quite cntaiti that ho can iiovor rise), sonicthinj:: 
oi tho same imoloranco to criticistu. aiul siMHCtliiiij; o\ the same 
ilisposition to the methmls ol Mark Antony. Hnt the haril 
bitterness of Mr. C'hamberlain l\>nns no part ot his character, 
ami if any hail dared ti> attack hitu at the lieiqht oi his power 
they uonid have liad httle to apprehend except his mastery of 
weajH^ns i^enerally held lei;itimate. Net, at the election of 1918 
the fear of him was such that the very n\en who t^ppi>seil him 
almost apoloi;ised for iloini;- so. It is only when we remember 
how craven was the attituile of even distins^nished statesmen 
ilnrini; the hei>;ht of Mr. Cleors^e's popularity, that we can do 
due jusiice 10 the mere couraj^e of that lons;-dravvu-out duel 
with Mr. diamberlain between uhhi and igoj. 

Mr. Cieot i^e was thett exposed to every kind of risk — the risk 
oi beiui; killed with ridicule, of beiui^; beggared by loss of busi- 
tiess. even oi beins; torn to pieces by crowds exixised to what 
Mr. r^.Ufour called an "intolerable strain." Vet he never 
tlinched. While Mr. Chamberlain lolled disdainful on the 
Treasmv Bench, the young Welsh member below the gang- 
wav exhausted every resource oi industry atul artifice in the 
attack. .\n air of provincialism still chmg to him. At no 
time gifted in the art of dress, he was in these days worse than 
careless; for he atTected smuething of the anxious dandyism 
of the small towti ; the red rose which occasionally adorned his 
buttonhole served to accemuate the contrast between his homely 
appearatice .uul the exaggerated spruceness of the Colonial 
Secretarv ; he wore his dark brown hair longer than custom 
sanctions: and even the noble head could not quite redeem his 
tigure friMu the suggestion oi the lesser middle class. But 
whei\ he was on his feet the sheer force of his passion cancelled 
these peculiarities, while the loi'«scuess of much oi his phrasing 
was forgotten in the music and etuotional quality oi a voice 
which, while never rising much above a conversational level, 
was capable oi instantaneously adapting itself equally to biting 
invective, solenui appeal or reprtxtf. or the most witniing 
frankness. 

The etTect of these House of Commons speeches, however, 
was largelv contuied to the chamber and the lobbies. Wliile 



THE BOER WAR 78 

Mr. Lloyd George's reputation as a debater was continually 
rising at Westminster, the public knew of him chiefly as a 
rattling rough-and-tumble platform speaker. Few of his con- 
tributions to debate reached the newspapers except in the most 
fragmentary form, and those who would now find them must 
seek the impartial columns of Hansard, i'llsewhere it was 
generally considered enough to say that he "continued the 
debate." Thus it was that the country at large hardly realised, 
when the war was over, how solid ha/1 been Mr. George's ad- 
vance. Parliamentary animosities are apt to pass with the 
occasion, while any conspicuous display of ability makes a 
lasting impression. Long before good people in the country 
had ceased to think of the member for Carnarvon Boroughs 
as merely a more virulent, and less amusing, and a less "good 
form" Labouchere, he had been marked in the inner circle of 
politics as certain of high office whenever the Liberal party 
returned to i)Ower. 

This newspaper censorship had for long its effect on the 
public estimation of Mr. George's qualities. During many 
years, almost indeed until the second year of the Great War, 
there remained a widespread popular superstition that he 
was specially a man of words, a master of demagogic arts, in- 
capable of taking a reasoned view of great questions. Such a 
belief, it is safe to say, would not have survived perusal of 
any tolerable reports of parliamentary speeches during the Boer 
War — speeches which, though often violent, and sometimes 
disfigured with bitter personalities, were seldom deficient in 
sound argument, and often instinct with true statesmanship. 



At the end of the first year of the war Mr. George's pros- 
pects, making full allowance for whatever reputation he had 
gained, were black in the extreme. In the City his practice as a 
solicitor had alarmingly declined. The business of the firm 
was largely concerned with the affairs of limited companies, 
and as the City was perhaps the most fervidly patriotic spot 
in England Mr. George's bad eminence as a pro-Boer reacted 
disastrously on all such patronage. His constituents murmured. 



74 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

There must have been times when stark ruin, political and per- 
sonal, stared him in the face. But he had entered on a path 
whicli, while it might be ultimate destruction to follow, it was 
immediate undoing to retrace. It is only to the established 
great that inconsistency is admissible in the name of statesman- 
ship. The beginner in demagogy can afford nothing so ill as 
moderation. As a private member, Mr. George, having at- 
tained unpopular notoriety, could only hope for safety by con- 
tinuing io court it. It was better to risk ostracism, bankruptcy, 
lynching, than to go back. With unconquerable optimism Mr. 
George trusted to his star and went forward. 



CHAPTER VI 

CHAMPION OF THE BOERS 

THE real crisis in Mr. George's career, as well as in the war, 
was over when the "khaki" election took place in the 
autumn of 1900. Lord Roberts had entered Bloom fontein on 
March 13th; on June 5th the British flag had been hoisted at 
Pretoria. Kimberley, Ladysmith, Mafeking had been succes- 
sively relieved. Most important of all, foreign opinion had 
been impressed by the change Roberts had brought on the scene, 
and the danger, once far from unreal, of a Continental Coali- 
tion, had receded. It was plain to the most hostile critic, as to 
a friendly observer like Captain Mahan, that the affair was now 
"simply a question of endurance between combatants immeas- 
urably unequal in resources." 

Naturally the country was in a less exasperated temper; if 
the pro-Boers were still unpopular, they were less virulently 
detested ; and many, who regarded criticism as t'-'^ason while 
the enemy was prospering, were now not undisposed to recog- 
nise a point of view other than the government's. The thor- 
ough-going pro-Boers were, in fact, not the main sufferers by 
the election. Mr. Lloyd George enjoyed a personal triumph, 
defeating by a larger majority than in 1895 a genuine "khaki" 
candidate, Colonel Piatt ; and the stop-the-war party as a whole 
almost held its own. The chief victims were the unfortunate 
Liberal Imperialists, the men who, like Sir Henry Fowler, had 
declared that war could only be avoided by "trailing the British 
flag in the mire of dishonour." For them there was little posi- 
tive enthusiasm, while that part of the electorate which took 
its tone from Mr. Chamberlain scarcely distinguished between 
one kind of Liberal and another. Hard as the event might be 
to some honest men, voters could not be blamed. Those who 
wanted a certain thing felt the wisdom of going to the right 

75 



76 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

shop for it. Those who wanted the opposite thing were equally 
resolved to go to the opposition shop. Thus Mr. Lloyd George 
enjoyed, with the drawbacks, the advantages of an unequivocal 
attitude. If he could survive at all, he must survive as a man 
of some mark. There were doubtless some of his friends who 
thought his opposition a piece of ruinous quixotry, while his 
enemies condemned it as mere criminal folly. But there was a 
third and juster view, which happened to be well expressed by 
an extraordinarily prescient writer in the Daily Mail then in 
the first flush of its clever youth : — 

"It matters little," he wrote with a detachment astonishing 
when we consider the temper of the time and the general tone 
of this particular paper, "whether you arouse a storm of ap- 
probation or a whirlwind of abuse, so long as your individual- 
ity stirs men's passions to the depths. It is of small conse- 
quence whether you are a public idol or the detested of the 
masses, so long as the very mention of your name thrills men's 
emotions — the transition from villain to hero is but a small one 
on the political stage, one that the changing limelight of public 
opinion affects automatically." 

From this point of view to be burned in effigy side by side 
with Paul Kruger was much better than to be languidly com- 
mended by Mr. Balfour. But the foresight of this critic did 
not stop here. Instituting a daring comparison between Mr. 
Chamberlain and the man who was seen by the crowd as his 
antithesis, this acute observer (who signs himself "M") said : — 

"The same clear, low-pitched cruel voice ; the same keen inci- 
sive phrases ; the same mordant bitterness ; the same caustic 
sneer; the same sardonic humour; the same personal enmity. 
It is the very re-incarnation of the present Colonial Secretary 
in his younger days — a spectre of his dead self arisen to haunt 
him. A little more excited, you say, a trifle more violent in 
gesture, more impassioned in delivery; yes, more than Mr. 
Chamberlain now is, but . . . the very substance of his speech 
is a far away echo of a well-remembered eulogy of our present 
foes — Mr. Chamberlain's splendid advocacy of the Majuba com- 
promise. Will time that has had so mellowing an influence on 



CHAMPION OF THE BOERS 77 

the great Imperialist work a similar change in the virulent Little 
Englander? Will he a score of years hence be the tower of 
strength of the Imperial or the Parochial party? None can 
say now, but that he will be by then one of the foremost men 
in the nation's Parliament is beyond question." 

So shrewd an observer clearly thought that, quite apart 
from the moral rights or wrongs of the question, Mr. George 
was not doing badly for himself. 

His position was strengthened about this time by a powerful 
accession of journalistic support. Hitherto one of the greatest 
weaknesses of the pro-Boer party was the want of "a good 
press." Under the editorship of Mr. (afterwards Sir) E. T. 
Cook the Daily News had thrown its then considerable influ- 
ence on the side of the war; and according to a contemporary 
"the archangel Gabriel himself could not shake the conscience 
of Bouverie Street." Mr. Cook was a rather uninspired and 
uninspiring editor, in whom immense industry strove hard to 
supply the defects of natural genius for his profession. But 
he was able, quite honest, and very obstinate, and no protests 
from his readers could either change or mitigate his imperial- 
istic sentiments. The power of money was successfully in- 
voked where no other argument could prevail. Mr. George was 
instrumental in interesting certain wealthy Quakers ; the paper 
was bought ; and Mr. Cook made way for an editor on whom 
the peace party could count. By singular good fortune the 
new proprietors discovered in a young Blackburn journalist, 
Mr. A. G. Gardiner, not only an able and enthusiastic exponent 
of their views, but a writer of exceptional grace, wit, and per- 
suasiveness. For half a generation to come Mr. G'^nree, 
naturally a favourite of the paper which he virtually created, 
had much more than the advantage of being approved in deco- 
rous editorials. He was consistently presented as a hero by an 
artist in the picturesque. 

The first session of the new Parliament was enlivened by 
what a Conservative opponent^ (afterwards destined to be 

* Sir A. Griffith Boscawen, "Fourteen Years in Parliament." 



78 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Mr. Lloyd George's subordinate) calls "an exceedingly con- 
temptible attack" on the Colonial Secretary. Mr. George 
moved an aiiiendment to the Address declaring that "Ministers 
of the Crown and members of either House of rarliamcnt 
holding subordinate olTice ought to have no interest, direct or 
indirect, in any firm or company competing for contracts with 
the Crown." With the general purport of this declaration 
there could, of course, be no disagreement, but its personal 
implications were hotly resented. Mr. Chamberlain's brother 
happened to be chairmaji of a firm called Kynochs Limited, 
which manufactured munitions of war, and Mr. George, dwell- 
ing on the family connection with this undertaking, developed 
the suggestion of "indelicacy" which was afterwards to be 
put forward (to his own discomfort) in the "Marconi affair." 

"I do not say." he explained, "that the Secretary for the 
Colonies or the Financial Secretary to the Treasury ^ has done 
anything to lower the standard of proud pre-eminence which 
we enjoy as a country in this matter. What I do say is that 
they have given legitimate grounds for uneasiness, and above 
all they have established precedents which, if they were fol- 
lowed, would lead to something infinitely worse than anything 
I have spoken of to-day." 

The incident was harmless to Mr. Chamberlain, for nobody 
was so absurd as to suppose that he had more than one idea 
in his head, and it is in truth difl'icult to conceive, in modern 
investment conditions, the possibility of every minister being 
in such a position that neither he, nor any of his connections, 
is safe from the suggestion of interest of some kind in one of 
the numerous forms of activity which may derive benefit from 
war expenditure. But in many quarters Mr. George's action 
was approved on the principle, much more strongly held then 
than later, that in matters of this sort over-zeal is better than 
no zeal at all. 



The second session of the khaki parliament, occasioned by the 
deatii of Queen Victoria, was fomial, but in the succeeding 

* Mr. Austen Qiamberlain. 



CHAMPION OF THE BOERS 79 

session, which opened in February, 1901, Mr. George gained 
immediate prominence by a form of attack which inflamed 
a fresh i)uhHc opinion against him. Hitherto he had been con- 
tent to chastise the government. Now he mauled the mihtary 
heroes. Lord Kitchener's "iron hand" was the subject of elo- 
quent denunciation during the debate on the Address. Mr. 
George quoted a Canadian officer who described how "we 
move from valley to valley, lifting cattle and sheep, burning 
and looting, and turning out women and children to weep in 
despair beside the ruin of their once beautiful homesteads." 
He produced a proclamation by Lord Roberts declaring that 
"should any damage be done to any lines of railway or public 
works, the houses and farms in the vicinity of the place where 
the damage is done will be destroyed, and the residents in the 
neighbourhood dealt with under martial law." Mr. George 
fastened on the words "residents in the neighbourhood." 
Mere proximity was an ofifence; punishment might be extended 
to inoffensive persons solely because they lived near the spot 
where damage was done. The utility of terror as a military 
weapon had not yet dawned upon him, and the practice of "re- 
prisals," to be carried later to such extremes under his own 
government in Ireland, bore to him a strange and horrid as- 
pect. It was certainly without hypocrisy that the politician 
who was afterwards to slur over the partial destruction of the 
city of Cork now held up to execration a proclamation issued 
by General Bruce Hamilton : — 

"Notice — the town of Venterburg has been cleared of sup- 
plies, and partly burnt, and the farms in the vicinity destroyed, 
on account of the frequent attacks on the railway in the neigh- 
bourhood. The Boer women and children who are left behind 
should apply to the Boer Commandants for food, who will 
supply them unless they wish to see them starve. No supplies 
will be .sent from the railway to the town." 

"This man," said Mr. George, referring to General Hamil- 
ton, "is a brute and a disgrace to his uniform." As to the 
British army, it was "jaded, worn, and broken." The Colonial 
Secretary, Mr. George said, had appealed at the beginning of 



80 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

hostilities to the God of Battles. "He has got his answer. It 
is not the one he anticipated, but it is sufficiently terrible in all 
conscience to make honourable members pause and reflect 
whether they dare go on with this business." 

Until this moment no critic of the war had gone so far in 
public speech. The immediate reply came in a singularly re- 
strained reproof from a new member, Mr. Winston Churchill, 
fresh from South African adventures, who had a good word 
for the Boers, as well as for General Hamilton and, while ad- 
mitting unpleasant incidents, put forward the quaint plea that 
the Germans had done worse in 1870. The next day another 
new member, Mr. Andrew Bonar Law, remarked on the 
"peculiar ability and the remarkable success of the way the 
honourable member (Mr. George) laid his baits for the applause 
of the gentlemen round him." But however Mr. George might 
be detested by one class of critic, or suspected by another, he had 
made it clear that there was no advantage in being mealy- 
mouthed, and this speech had considerable effect in strengthen- 
ing the courage of those who thought with him. They began 
to realise that there is nothing more futile than calm fanati- 
cism, moderate immoderation, and respectable impropriety: and 
during the ensuing summer a sharper note was observable even 
on the part of the official opposition. It was in June * that 
Sir Henry Gampbell-Bannerman made his famous declaration 
concerning "methods of barbarism," that Mr. Morley spoke 
of the non-Imperialist Liberals as in the "main stream" of 
party thought, and that Sir William Harcourt inveighed 
bluntly against "the gold gamblers of the Rand." Clearly Mr. 
George had been leading his leaders. There were those who 
now looked forward to a re-birth of Liberalism, but in fact the 
cleavage was accentuated by these speeches. 

When, a few days later, Mr. George moved the adjournment 
on the subject of concentration camps, and roundly charged 
the authorities with inflicting quite indefensible conditions on 
Boer women and children, who were dying at the rate of 450 
per thousand, while the death-rate of troops in the field was 

* At a banquet presided over by Mr. Stanhope. 



CHAMPION OF THE BOERS 81 

only 52, the defence was in part undertaken by Mr. Haldane. 
The last chance of a restoration of Liberal solidarity seemed 
to be gone after the Queen's Hall meeting on June 19, when 
farewell was said to Mr. Sauer, a leading member of the Afri- 
kander Bond, who had been touring Great Britain in the inter- 
ests of peace, and, (it was largely held), of Dutch supremacy 
in South Africa. A vast crowd surged angrily outside, singing 
"Rule Britannia" and cheering for Mr. Cecil Rhodes, while 
somebody, with either a marked excess or a surprising defi- 
ciency of humour, called for a similar ovation for Mr. Alfred 
Beit and Mr, Albu. Mr. George, within, spoke on the text 
"What shall it profit a nation if it annex the gold fields of the 
whole world and lose its own soul," and thanked Heaven "for 
the spectacle of one little nation of peasants standing against 
the mightiest Empire in the world." 

The buttons were now oflF the foils. The next day Mr. 
Asquith, at a dinner of South Essex Liberals, replied to the 
pro-Boers, declaring that war had been forced on the country, 
and that South Africa must be freed from the "corrupt tyr- 
anny" of the Kruger regime. Had Lord Rosebery at this 
moment definitely thrown in his lot with Mr. Asquith the split 
might well have proved irremediable. But, far from giving a 
sign, Lord Rosebery went out of his way to declare that he 
must "plough his furrow alone," and for a moment Mr. George 
seemed to entertain a fleeting hope that this agricultural enter- 
prise might lead the noble earl in the long run somewhere in 
the neighbourhood of one who, with all his crusading zeal, was 
a highly practical politician. It is at least significant that from 
this time his passion moderated. On July 4 he expressly dis- 
sociated himself in the House of Commons from the Queen's 
Hall resolution in favour of the restoration of Boer inde- 
pendence. A swift end to the war, and a self-governing South 
Africa, were now his two demands, and Lord Rosebery fa- 
voured both. Mr. George's plea for peace, put forward early 
in August, was anything but fanatical, and might almost be 
called opportunistically common-sense. One of his arguments 
was, that with all our forces tied up in South Africa, we should 
be very awkwardly situated if the necessity arose elsewhere to 



82 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

"defend the honour of the Empire." "Why do honourable 
members laugh?" he asked indignantly, as the ministerial 
benches jeered. "Do they think they have a monopoly of that 
sentiment?" He proceeded to argue that any incident might 
arise which would fatally test our weakness, and that peace 
should be made at once as a mere matter of prudence. The 
argument was, of course, by no means far-fetched. "Inci- 
dents" had, indeed, already occurred, and their development 
had only been avoided by submission. The government dared 
not stop the great traffic in arms, and at Germany's behest we 
had even abandoned our right of search at sea. 

During the Autumn, in a political progress through Scot- 
land and Wales, Mr. George reverted to an earlier line of 
argument, now less likely to be heard with impatience, dwelling 
on the indefinite postponement of land and temperance legis- 
lation by the protraction of the war. "It will never be fin- 
ished," he said at Edinburgh, "until we have a statesman who 
has the courage first of all to find out the truth, in the next 
place to believe the truth, then to tell the truth, and finally to 
act on the truth. Not one of those qualifications is to be found 
in Mr. Chamberlain's statesmanship." 

At Carnarvon, referring to Lord Rosebery's expressed in- 
tention to put his own views into the "common stock," Mr. 
George declared that nobody was better qualified than the late 
Liberal prime minister to deal with the situation in South 
Africa, and his favourable opinion was strengthened by the 
famous "clean slate" speech at Chesterfield, which, usually re- 
called as a lecture to Liberals, was in fact a bitter attack on 
Chamberlainism. As regarded South Africa, it proposed a 
"regular peace" in lieu of "unconditional surrender." All this 
accorded with Mr, George's views, and when he went to Bir- 
mingham two days later he had in his pocket a speech that was 
very largely a panygeric of Lord Rosebery, whose liberality 
was contrasted with the attitude hitherto occupied by Mr. As- 
quith and Sir Edward Grey. To these politicians Mr. George 
had proposed to say in effect "When I talked liberality and 
common-sense you jeered and sneered; now Lord Rosebery, 



CHAMPION OF THE BOERS 83 

from his high pedestal, talks exactly as I did you find all he 
says very good." 

One passage in the speech is worth noting in view of later 
associations. "There is one other service which Lord Rose- 
bery has done in the interest of the fair and effective discussion 
of this great question. He has treated with scorn the doctrine 
of the infallibility of Lord Milner. I am not sure that this new 
dogma of papal infallibility is not the most serious obstacle in 
the path of the unity of Liberal action for the moment. Any 
suggestion that is made, whether by Sir Henry Campbell-Ban- 
nerman or anyone else, if Lord Milner does not approve, or if 
in any way it involves the slightest slur on him, is not even 
considered on its merits." 

Only a few lines of this speech were spoken. Birmingham, 
which made Mr. George a freeman in 1921, was anxious to 
make him either a cripple or a corpse twenty years earlier. At 
the time it was fashionable to talk of Mr. George's escape in a 
policeman's uniform as clear proof of a craven disposition. In 
fact his fine courage in facing a certain class of risk — perhaps 
the most completely admirable feature of his character — was 
never more signally illustrated than when he ventured within 
reach of the fury of the Birmingham mob, maddened as it was 
by the insult to its idol implied in the very presence of his chief 
assailant. 

A telegram announcing the break up of the meeting was 
sent to Mr. Chamberlain : "Lloyd George the traitor was not 
allowed to say a word; two hundred thousand citizens and 
others passed a unanimous vote of confidence in the govern- 
ment and of admiration for your unique and fearless services 
for king and country." The effect, however, was rather un- 
favourable than otherwise to the object of this adoration. Mr. 
Asquith was impelled to protest ; the Spectator expressed "dis- 
gust and indignation," and from this moment the more chival- 
rous Conservatives, to whom the pluck of Mr. George could 
hardly fail to appeal, regarded him, if not with less hostility, 
at least with more respect. At his next public appearance ^ 
Mr. George was naturally bitter. "Judas," he said, "only fin- 
^At Bristol. 



8t INIR. TJ.OYD GEORGE 

ishccl himscll, but this tiian (Mr. Chamberlain) has finished 
Ihinisands." The main burden of the speech, however, was 
that LiM'd Rosobery wouUi be welconieil l)ack as leader of a 
united Liberal party. This idea he developed in an interview 
with an evening paper. "If Lonl Rosebery really becomes 
leader, and takes the country with him, we shall all be de- 
lii;hted, and Sir Henry C'ampbell-Bannerman will be as pleased 
as anyone." Sir Henry's real thoughts must remain conjec- 
tural. Mr. George's can be fairly accurately inferred. On 
Ireland and certain domestic questions he was certainly nearer 
the man of the lonely furrow than to his titular leader, and he 
may well have tliought that as a counterpoise to Mr, Cham- 
berlain Lord Rosebery was far more likely to take the country 
with him. Moreover, Mr. George had reason to susjXTt that 
even in relatiiMi to the war Sir Henry was leading nowhither. 

This suspicion was confirmed by the olTicial amendment to 
tlie Address at the beginning of the session of igo2. This 
amendment, entrusted to a Lancashire member of no special 
distinction, was, indeed, almost nonsensical. It blamed minis- 
ters for pursuing a course not conducive to an early and durable 
peace, but pledged the j)arty to "support all proj^er measures 
for the elTective prosecution of the war." The two separate 
clauses were morally and logically destructive of each other, 
except on the formula of "My country, right or wrong." 
Against this scarcely ingenious attempt to make the best of 
both worlds Mr. George protest eil by going into the lobby with 
the Irish members, on a thorough-going amendment proposed 
by Mr. HilUni. Speaking on the Cawley amentlmcnt itself, he 
told Sir Henry that he hail been induceil to make a declaration 
which nuist prevent him in future being very enthusiastic in 
his opposition to the war : 

"My right honourable friend has been captured, and T fear 
he has been treated by his captors as the Boers treat their pris- 
oners — he has been strip|x\l of all his principles and left on the 
veldt to find his way back as best he can, ... It is a nu'stake, 
eveti if it brings temporary popularity to the party, to pawn the 
heirlooms of Liberalism in order to buy oif unpopularity. If 



CHAMPION OF THE BOERS 85 

we adopt the course laid down in the amendment we shall sim- 
ply substitute for an unpopularity which is undeserved, so long 
as it comes from adhesicjn to a definite principle, a contempt 
which will be thoroughly well deserved." 

Mr. George might have modified his bitterness had he not 
still indulged the hope that l.ord Rosebery would rescue the 
Liberals from such leading. But these hojies were finally 
dashed by Lord Rosebery's Liverpool speech in February. 
The abandonment of Home Rule might not have discouraged 
Mr. George, but there was nothing about land reform, or 
Welsh Disestablishment, or any of the causes in which the 
Welsh Radical was vividly interested. For such an exile who 
should take the risks of a Monk? Mr, George turned from 
Lord Rosebery in much the .same spirit of disillusionment that 
Bolingbrokc flung away from the impracticable Pretender ; 
henceforth Lord Rosebery could be only of a;.sthetic interest; 
a noble Primrose 'twas to him, and it was nothing more. As 
the lesser of two evils, Mr. George decided for loyalty to Sir 
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and for the remaining months 
of the war he proceeded on orthodox lines as the government's 
sharf)est critic and Mr. Chamberlain's most untiring foe. His 
last considerable speech was made on March 20. It was on 
this night that Mr. Chamberlain told Mr. Dillon he was a 
"good judge of traitors" and that Mr. Dillon retorted that 
Mr. Chamberlain was "a damned liar." In a House seething 
with excitement Mr. George, referring to an announcement 
made earlier in the House, expressed surprise that our generals 
should have celebrated a "victory" which was really a trivial 
affair of outposts, simply because it had been gained on the 
anniversary of Majuba. Since the war broke out, he said, 
British arms had suffered eighteen defeats of far greater mag- 
nitude than Majuba. 

"And the pro-Boers rejoice at it," exclaimed a ministerial 
member. The point of the interruption was that the Irish 
Nationalists had greeted with cheers the news of Lord 
Methuen's defeat, and it had been persistently but quite inaccu- 
rately stated that Mr. George, who sat with the Irish members, 



8(5 MH. M.OVI) CKOKCK 

li.iil t;iktMi jKitt ill (his lU'iiuMisltatioii. Ivcsi-iitiiu'iit of this 
shuuln- il(Mi4)lo(l Mr. Lloyd Cleorgv's vtluiiuiuo in npiuliatiiijif 
tht> charge ol ri'jcMoiii^ in his couiiliy's diUats. Talo with 
alitor. \\v cricil, "That is a most insolriit iiMiiark." aiul whi-ii 
latri Ihr Strii'lary ol State tor War. Mr. Ihtuh ick.' doolaroil 
that Mr. (It^Mj.^o "si-cincd t(^ hr ihsai>|>i>inliil that thrii" wcn' not 
more (hsasters to ^li»at over" he rephed with sotiiethiii^ hke 
passion "That is uiitrtie." This last speech, thouj;h deHvereil in 
siieh stress ol eiuotioti. was really a t|iiite reasoiiai>le appeal for 
peace and settlement o\\ liheral ti'rins which wiHild not imply a 
vast military atul hnreaneratic estahlishment in South Africa. 
With responsihle government. Mr. l.li^yd (ieori;e argued, ap- 
piasenu-nt ini<;ht he expected. "The war will have tan^ht wis- 
vloni »>n l>i>th sides. We shall have no more nltimatnms from 
the inter side, ami T (\o not helieve we shall have any more 
llii;hlniry picnic speeches ivoxn onr side." 

W hen peace came a few weeks later the inemher for C'ar- 
!»arvon Inuoii^hs was pri>hahly the most nnpopiilar man in 
Cireat Ihitain. Ihit he had won somethins; more snhstantial 
than mete popnlarity ; he had indelihly impresseil himself t>n 
the imai;inalion of his generation. On tiie pro-Boer side he 
towered like Satan, in 

. . . transcendent i;lory raised 
Ahove his fellows, with monarchal pride. 
Conscious of hij^hest worth. 

Amon>;" the 1 iheral ImjHMi.ilists there were stately tii^nres. hnt 
those wlu> most admired them minified approv.d with pity lor 
the sijnalor oi their associatiiMis. Mr. (ieori;e had little admir- 
ation, hnt he e.^^cajKHl the pity. It seemed then not very prohahle 
that Mr. .Xsunith or Sir I'Mwaril (Ire\ wtniKI ai^ain tind the 
"main cnrient" of I. iheral opinion, llnmane Conserxatives 
were not nnwillini^ to see them, after tine penatice. serve in 
minor posts in Heaven. Mr. (leor«;e. It was «;enerally assnmeil. 
wonld rei»;n in Hell, and i^liMv in that IkuI eminence. 

The war had j;iven him not only a passii>n atul an opportnnity 

"Afterwards Lord Midleton. 



CIIAMI'JON OF THE liOEIlS 87 

but a hobby. His old interest in matters military had been 
quickened by the campaign. A sympathetic bioj^rapher ' re- 
calls that he developed "most uncanny military skill" and 
"would prophesy with the most remarkable astuteness the next 
move of tlie generals on either side." As some at least of the 
British moves were purely involuntary such foresight was in 
truth little short of miraculous. It is, however, interesting to 
note that so early questions of strategy exercised a p<'jwerful 
fascination over the mind of one who was s^j long to be con- 
sidered the typical pacifist. 

Mr. George aged rapidly during these years of intense 
strain. At the beginning of the war he had not a grey hair, 
and his face still retained much of the freshness of youth. But 
long before the struggle was over there had come a whiteness 
at the temples, and the broad forehead was already deeply cf)r- 
rugated by that arrangement of lines, half good-naturedly 
quizzical, half alertly interrogative, which at once seizes the 
eye of the caricaturist. There was little trace, except in the 
gay and still boyish laugh, of the careless lad of the Llanystum- 
dwy days. Indeed, until the new century had advanced some 
years, Mr. George's anxieties remained so formidable that he 
had need of all his natural elasticity of spirit. He had mani- 
festly "arrived." But it was like an arrival at a continental 
railway terminus. Some time was to elapse before he could 
get his luggage through the Custom House and exchange the 
dust and worry of the station of the Holy Lazarus for the 
comfort and cleanliness of the Elysian fields and the Hotel 
Dives. 
*Mr. Harold Spender. • 



CHAPTER VII 

EDUCATION AND RELIGION 

THERE is a sense of anti-climax in turning from the clash 
of foreign war to the mumblings of the domestic contro- 
versy to which Mr. George immediately directed his energies. 
Yet, if the Boer War firmly established him as a public figure, 
the Education Bill of 1902 contributed more than anything to 
make unchallengeable his claim to Ministerial place, while it 
was at the same time a prime factor in hastening the day of 
his preferment. 

The pen of a great political satirist might profitably be 
employed in tracing the story of this measure. The Bill, which 
produced the most important political results, without its 
authors being in the least aware of the forces they were freeing, 
sprang from the brain of the late Sir Robert Morant, who in 
far Siam had practised bureaucratic methods which, on pro- 
motion to Whitehall, he considered highly applicable to the 
natives of this country. The Empire has no religion, and 
though to Sir Robert as a man one creed might be specially 
true, to him as an official all (to vary the Gibbonian phrase) 
were equally a nuisance. His object was the best secular edu- 
cation, and he had little patience with people whose consciences 
got in the way of this ideal. Considering the old school boards 
ineffective, he proposed to transfer their powers to the Bor- 
ough and County councils; to link up schools of all grades; 
and (with a sole view to increased efficiency) to extend rate aid 
to denominational schools, which had so far existed precari- 
ously on voluntary contributions supplemented by grants from 
the Exchequer. Mr. Balfour was pleased with the plan, which 
also gratified the Liberal Mr. Haldane, whose mind worked 
on much the same lines as Sir Robert Morant's. But Mr. Bal- 
four was not only a highly intelligent man genuinely interested 

88 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 89 

in education ; he was also head of the Conservative party, and 
the Church had a certain claim on him. So he slipped into a 
Bill which was primarily a measure of bureaucratic concentra- 
tion a few clauses which he deemed due to the Church, In 
these, of course, Sir Robert Morant had no manner of interest; 
but it was wholly around them that the trouble was to rage. 
That Mr. Chamberlain, Unitarian, anti-clerical, and an excel- 
lent tactician, should have given assent to a Bill which he was 
afterwards to deplore as the cause of the gravest electoral 
trouble is remarkable. But Mr. Chamberlain rarely thought of 
more than one thing at one time, and he was then occupied with 
anticipatory enjoyment of an early and triumphant peace. Thus 
he readily gave what must have been a thoughtless assent to 
the Bill, and indeed told his constituents that he would stand 
or fall by it. 

The debate was carried on by minorities on both sides. 
Many Liberals secretly favoured the Bill ; and though Mr. Hal- 
dane would not vote for it, he commended it openly, declaring 
many of its provisions to be quite German in their excellence. 
The real leadership of the opposition was left to Mr. George ; 
on the other side Lord Hugh Cecil and Mr. Dillon said all the 
things that would normally come from the Treasury Bench. 
The Education Bill debate was thus a soldiers' battle, a kind of 
political Fontenoy, and all the credit of Liberal opposition 
naturally and deservedly accrued to Mr. George. 

The quarrel centred on rate aid to denominational schools. 
The Government maintained that as Anglicans, Roman Catho- 
lics, Jews, and others had made great sacrifices to keep up their 
schools it would be iniquitous now to deprive them of their 
special character. On the other hand it was plain that the 
voluntary system, backed by government grants, could no 
longer keep pace with the fresh demands constantly made on it 
in the sacred name of efficiency. Rate-aid was therefore 
adopted as the remedy for "intolerable strain." The Noncon- 
formists (who had few voluntary schools) objected. It was 
monstrous, in their view, that the ratepayers' money should be 
used, in the words of Mr. George,^ for "teaching religion, of 

^ Speech in the Second Reading Debate, May 8, 1902. 



00 MH. I.LOYD GEORGE 

which a large section of the ratepayers do not approve." They 
objected incidentally to control of education being vested in 
committees not directly elected. But the main fight was over 
the single question of rate-aid. 

Mr. George, with his usual eye to tactical eflFect, kept the 
point well in the foreground. Mr. Haldane had deplored the 
clamour about religious teaching, and in the interests of effi- 
ciency, had advised that discussion should be concentrated on 
the authority that should c(Mitrol the schools. Mr. George would 
have none of it. "I cannot." he said, "comprehend why Mr. 
Haldane said that the authority was everything, and advised 
Nonconformists not to miml these religious squabbles. You 
cannot base any system of education on an injustice to a large 
section of the community. . . . My honourable friend seems al- 
ways to be above the snow-line. His counsel is very serene in 
its purity, but rather sterile. Let him descend from the region 
of eternal snow and come down to bare facts, and he will find 
that things are not so easy to settle as they seem." 

The feelings of the Nonconformists were, indeed, sufficient 
to bewilder the Hegelian philosopher. It had been arg^Jed from 
the Conservative benches that as Churchmen, Roman Catholics 
and Jews were rated for the Board schools, where sectarian 
religion was not supposed to be taught, it could not be called 
unfair to rate Dissenters for Church, Roman Catholic, and 
Jewish schools. Mr. George quickly retorted that Board 
schools were not Nonconfonnist schools: a majority of their 
teachers had been Churchmen. "Is the Bible," he asked, "a 
Nonconformist book? It is not for me to repudiate the sug- 
gestion, but we do not claim a monopoly in it." 

Finally he turned on the Irish, who had joined in this issue 
their old Conservative foes, with a threat. Why, he asked, 
had the Liberals been for so long in a minority ? 

"It is because we committed ourselves to the cause of Ire- 
land. ... It is rather hard. In 1886 we threw over our most 
cherished leaders, Spurgeon and Bright, Dr. Allan, Dr. Dale 
and even Mr. Chamberlain. We threw them over for one 
reason only: because we felt that it was due to Ireland; and 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 91 

it is rather hard, if they will forgive me for speaking candidly, 
to be put in this plight of being beaten down for the cause of 
Ireland, and that Irishmen, of all people, should then help our 
foes and theirs to make our defeat the more intolerable. . . . 
Who are the people who are hit by the Bill? The people of 
Wales. We were offered by Mr. Chamberlain Disestablishment 
if we would throw over Home Rule. We did not do it, and 
some of the men who declined to do it will be sold up for rates 
under this Bill, and probably imprisoned under the mandamus 
of this Bill. They will remember that the instrument under 
which that happened was forged partly by the Irish members." 

The Irish obdurately disregarded this hint. For a moment, 
however, it seemed that peace might be made through that 
natural tendency for fanatics on one side to sympathise with 
fanatics on the other rather than with the calmly reasonable 
people on any side. Lord Hugh Cecil, the eloquent representa- 
tive of the Church, expressed a preference for "red-hot ene- 
mies," like Dr. Clififord, as against people of "cool views" like 
Mr. Haldane and when the Bill came into committee it looked 
for a moment as if extremes might meet. Lord Hugh sug- 
gested that the difficulty might be surmounted by allowing "dif- 
ferent religious teachers to enter the schools and teach their 
different beliefs." Mr. George at first appeared to welcome 
this suggestion, but afterwards saw difficulties. "We should 
have hundreds of little theological Fashodas," he picturesquely 
put it. "At one time a child would belong to one sect, and in 
a week or a fortnight there would be a successful Jameson 
raid. It is not a question of superior dogmas; it is a question 
of superior buns." On the other side Mr. Balfour hastily di- 
rected a stream of cold water on his kinsman's proposal, de- 
claring that he "looked with terror on the vista opened up." 
Entry of one minister of religion was giving him enough 
trouble. What would happen if every old priest were supple- 
mented by a dozen new presbyters? 

On the third reading Mr. George ended thus an eloquent 
denunciation of the Bill : — 

"Give the children the Bible if you want to teach them the 



92 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Christian faith. Let it be expounded to them by its founder. 
Stop this brawUng of priests in and around the schools, so that 
the children tnay hear Him speak to them in His own words. 
I appeal to the House of Commons now, at the eleventh hour 
to use its i^i^reat intiuence and lift its commanding voice and 
say 'Pray silence for the Master,' " 



During the debate Mr. George had returned with some zest 
to his old sport of bisho{vbaiting. Once ujxin a time he had 
called the Bishop of St. Asaph "the yahoo of controversy." 
Milder now, he could still denounce the bishops as "ecclesiasti- 
cal Shylocks" and representatives of the "snobbery" from 
which "the Carpenter's Son had suffered. " But it is only right 
to say that in general dexterity rather than violeijce was the 
feature of his conduct of the Nonconformist case. Mr. Bal- 
four, while regretting "a certain class of observation," added 
justly and generously tliat he had approved himself "an emi- 
nent parliamentarian" ; and as the contest proceeded there were 
unequivcxral signs of the increased consideration he commanded 
from the Liberal elder statesmen. For the first time Mr. As- 
quith bcgnn to send him notes, while Sir Henry Campbell- 
Bannerman from this period accorded him almost the deference 
due to an established power. He discovered an infallible in- 
stinct for the right moment to intervene in debate, and skilfully 
avoided, even in his most deeply meditated efforts, the effect of 
a set harangue. A few notes jotted down with a stubby pencil 
on a few odd scraps of paper were his only visible dependence. 
This improvisation may have made for diffuseness, but what 
was lost in concentration was gained in vitality and efferves- 
cence ; when there was not a sting there was always at least a 
sparkle, and he often made his best points from some passing 
incident, a cough, a jeer, an interruption, an entrance or an 
exit, which gave an opening for lively banter or sudden 
solemnity. 

The "passive resistance" following the passage of the Bill 
brought Mr. George into close co-operation with many who had 
bitterly opposed him during the war. At Lincoln he fraternised 
with Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Perks, the Imperialistic 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 93 

Wesleyan. At Queen's Hall Lord Rosebery showed him 
marked affability. While giving little positive encouragement 
to the passive resistance movement in England, as likely to 
end in embarrassing a Liberal Government, he became the idol 
of the Free Churches, and in Wales he adroitly made the Edu- 
cation Act a means of strengthening his hold on the people. 
To defeat the objects of the Bill in the Principality he put for- 
ward a scheme so dexterously lawyerlike that the House of 
Commons had to be invoked to bring it to naught. His advice 
to the Welsh Councils charged with administration of the Act 
was that they should "administer the loop-holes." In the old 
days the inspectors had taken into consideration the poverty of 
the Voluntary schools and had been content with very moder- 
ate efficiency. Let the Councils, said Mr. Lloyd George, follow 
their example. Let the schools be maintained at their old 
level, without recourse to the rates. Then, if they would not 
agree to religious equality and popular control, we shall be able 
to condemn them as inadequate and insanitary and prevent 
them receiving even the aid of the Exchequer. 

This plan of starving the Church schools into submission 
miscarried, through excess of zeal on the part of the Carmar- 
thenshire County Council, which in a fit of fury, declined to 
touch the Act at all. At once the Government introduced a 
measure, popularly known as the Welsh Coercion Bill, to com- 
pel the Councils to reason, by empowering the Board of Edu- 
cation to make the necessary outlays, recovering the money 
from the local authority. The Bill was furiously opposed by 
Mr. George, who said Mr. Balfour had "prescribed only on 
episcopal gossip from one of the Welsh bishops who had 
bullied, intrigued and pulled the wires." It was "the cowardly 
Bill of a craven government. During committee Mr. Balfour 
adopted a severe form of closure. Despite protests the Speaker 
put the question, and the doors were closed, but Mr. George 
still protested, and with Mr. McKenna and a number of Welsh 
members he refused to leave the chamber. "You have made 
it impossible for us," he said, "to discuss this thing, and we 
cannot, consistently with our sense of duty, take further part 
in the farce of this parliamentary session," In the days of Mr. 



94 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Chaplin's Agricultural Rates Bill ^ Mr. George had defied the 
chair at a similar crisis, but he had then been an almost soli- 
tary rebel. It was significant of his altered position that the 
whole Liberal party was now ready to support him. A few 
whispered words to Mr. Asquith, who was temporarily leading 
the opposition, and the latter, while declaring that a scene must 
be avoided, announced that the rest of the party would follow 
Mr. George and take no further part in the debate. A few 
moments later only two or three members remained on the 
opposition benches; the government played the rest of its 
farce to empty benches, and Wales was coerced on paper. 

The next day The Times, by the tone of its rebuke, showed 
its sense of the increased status of the delinquent. Mr, George, 
it said, was now "a serious politician and a serious claimant 
for high office," and these "methods of self-advertisement" 
might be inconvenient to him hereafter. He was organising 
Welsh revolt ; what would he say if, when himself in office, any 
section of the future opposition that felt aggrieved by his mea- 
sures sets itself to organise a general strike? "Perhaps in that 
event he will sometimes be heard to lament that he himself set 
so evil an example, that he condescended to become the chorus 
leader of rebellion." 

Here was rebuke coupled with recognition, and the recog- 
nition was more important than the rebuke. The power of 
The Times was great politically, and especially because its 
leading columns were eagerly watched by the conductors of 
more popular papers, which now hastened to treat Mr. Lloyd 
George with a respect hitherto lacking. For the rest the Welsh 
were never coerced in practice. Mr. George may have indulged 
in picturesque exaggeration when he declared that "there was 
an uprising of the people as had never been seen since the days 
of Llewellyn," but national feeling sufficed at least to baffle a 
weak and perplexed government. 

The English Dissenters, less powerful, could take revenge 
only by shedding their political principles with their cake-bas- 
kets. While the auctioneers made free with their knickknacks 
sold to pay the refused rates, the Nonconformists sullenly re- 

'See Chapter IV. 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 95 

nounced their allegiance. "Our reports," wrote Mr. Chamber- 
lain, "are as black as night." ^ He was right to be "most 
gloomy." Nonconformists left the Liberal Unionist party by 
thousands, and their secession was largely responsible for the 
disaster of 1906. This bitter resentment, however, is some- 
thing of a psychological puzzle. Superficially there seems no 
more justification for a citizen objecting to contribute to the 
support of a school in which there is Church teaching than for 
a gaol in which there is a Church service. He may have no 
personal use for the school. But only a very small percentage 
of the population has any personal use for the gaol. The case, 
however, went far beyond this. For years Free Churchmen 
had contributed without protest through the taxes to the sup- 
port of Church schools. It was only when rates were applied 
for the same purpose that they revolted. "How," asked Mr. 
Haldane, the scandalised philosopher, "can there be a con- 
science about rates and none about taxes?" Mr. George ex- 
plained but did not altogether elucidate. "The people," he 
said, "did not think taxes come from their own pockets. . . . 
The government . . . was a sort of Providence to which the 
people felt they contributed nothing. . . . Taxation is some- 
thing that droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven." ^ 

This ingenuous remark is not without a certain significance. 
The superstition which Mr. George attributed to "the people" 
seems in some measure to have affected himself even when 
wielding the "spigot of taxation." For many years he appar- 
ently nourished the belief that a high income-tax is little but 
a sort of massage for the financially over-nourished, highly 
salutary for them, and hurting nobody else. 



If his part in the Education dispute established for Mr. 
George an incontestable claim for some sort of place in the 
next Liberal administration, the Tarifif Reform controversy 
rather limited than advanced his pretensions to great office. As 

*To Sir Henry James, "Life of the Duke of Devonshire — Bernard 
Holland." 
' Speech at Aberystwith 1903. 



96 UK. LLOYD GEORGE 

late as the middle of 1904 it was possible for a highly intelli- 
gent and well-informed Radical writer to assign him an ap- 
pointment — that of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster — 
inferior to those indicated for Mr. Herbert Gladstone, Mr. 
Sidney Buxton, and even Mr. John Burns. 

In truth Mr. George, though zealous, was an exceedingly 
bad advocate in the Free Trade issue then dominant. He held 
what was eminently a defensive brief, and in defence he rarely 
shines. The Cobdenite faith was on its trial. It was charged 
by the Taritl Reformers with having brought Great Britain 
to a sorry state — iron gone, cotton going, and the rest of it. 
Obviously, the easiest way to secure acquittal was to smash 
the indictment, count by count, and this Mr. Asquith did in 
brilliant King's Counsel fashion ; he was the hero of the whole 
business on the Free Trade side. Mr. Lloyd George, on the 
other hand, was as much an embarrassment as the over-willing 
witness — he was constantly proving too much. His business 
was to say that, while pretty comfortable now, we should be 
in a miserable state if Mr. Chamberlain had his way. Instead 
he contended, with the utmost vehemence, that we were in a 
most miserable state already. His business was to say that 
Free Trade already more than sufficed to provide all necessary 
revenue, and that there was no necessity for "broadening the 
basis" of taxation. He actually proposed to broaden the basis, 
not by duties on corn or foreign manufactured goods, but by 
putting burdens on the landowners ; a curious way, incidentally, 
of binding with hoops of steel such Free Trade allies as the 
Duke of Devonshire and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. Mr. As- 
quith, with laisse::; faire in the marrow of his bones, involved 
the TarilT Reformers in intellectual entanglements — a sort of 
retiarius of the wet blanket. Mr. Churchill was an active skir- 
misher about the arena, ready to finish off cripples with his 
young sword. Mr. George could only play the part of the 
jesting spectator whose jeers betray ignorance of the technique 
of the business in hand. 

For the Cobdenite faith was not really in him : he was not 
logical enough, consistent enough, defined and limited enough. 
In 1896 he had played with the idea of preferential trade in 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 97 

the matter of tea duties. It may have been a jest, but the ortho- 
dox Free Trader is not thus gamesome. Moreover, being 
fundamentally uninterested, Mr. George lacked his usual per- 
ception. He confused the new Protection with the old, a purely 
modem importation, half Prussian, half Colonial, with the 
old-English clinging to use and wont. Thus at Oldham, in 
the autumn of 1903, he said: — 

"Mr. Chamberlain has appealed to the workmen, and there 
were very fine specimens of the British workman on his plat- 
form. There were three dukes, two marquesses, three or four 
earls. They had gone to help the workmen to tax his own 
bread. The Corn Laws meant high rents for them, and when 
a statesman of Mr. Chamberlain's position comes forward and 
proposes a return to the old Corn Law days, lords and dukes 
and earls and squires all come clucking towards him like a flock 
of fowls when they hear the corn shaken in the bin." 

Except on the principle that any rope is good enough for a 
pirate, the taunt was ill chosen. It suggested that Mr. Cham- 
berlain was going to do something for the land, whereas per- 
haps the weakest point about the scheme of the neo-Protection- 
ists was that it would even discourage British agriculture. But 
it is idle thus to criticise one who is in no sense a thinker, but 
simply an artist with the defects as well as the virtues of his 
temperament. Mr. George, it may be assumed, was frankly 
wearied by the whole business. He could jest prettily over Mr. 
Balfour's difficulties — his cabinet "like a worm, out in two 
and both ends wriggling." He could compare Mr. Austen 
Chamberlain to Casabianca, bravely sinking with the ship on 
his father's orders. He could contrast the faithful disciples 
of Birmingham, "finished articles," with Mr. Balfour's fol- 
lowers, who were "partly manufactured goods." He could 
admirably parody Mr. Chamberlain's jeremiad at the begin- 
ning of 1905 — "Everything going; the Empire going — iron 
and steel and cotton and pearl buttons. Everything is going 
except the government, and that won't go." Nobody, in short, 
could more skilfully and enjoyingly tie a cracker on to Mr. 



98 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Chamberlain's coat-tails. But when he got hold of a pistol he 
was just as dangerous as an American boy on the Fourth of 
July; his friends were lucky if they did not get a share of the 
charge. Take, for example, his speech in Staffordshire, on 
the subject of increasing home production : — 

"I will tell you how I would do it. I would have better land 
laws. I would give security of tenure and fair rent, so that 
people might put all they could into the land with confidence. 
I would have cheap transit, for it ought not to cost as much 
and more to carry goods from one part of the United Kingdom 
to another as it costs to transport them across the ocean to 
New York." 

After all, if the state was to interfere with the laws of rent, 
why should it not interfere to stop dumping? And how could 
it decree "cheap transit" without contravening the laws which 
Free Traders held to be applicable to every form of enterprise ? 
If the railway companies charged more for carrying a package 
from Harwich to Colchester than from Antwerp to London, 
the Free Trader assumed a very good reason; and he would 
have been well pleased if it cost only a penny a ton to move 
wheat from Winnipeg to the English mill, even though the 
charge for a forty miles inland journey were a thousand times 
as much. Mr. Lloyd George has never felt like this. Some- 
thing combative in him has found a certain cowardice in laissez 
faire; something in him has revolted against its apparent 
inhumanity; a direct, shallow, small tradesmanlike shrewdness 
has made him skeptical of the paradox that it may be good 
business to treat foes as well as friends, and aliens as well as 
countrymen; a passion for interference, a love of direction for 
direction's sake, a faith in the virtue of "doing something" 
made it fundamentally impossible for him to be a consistent 
Free Trader. On the other hand Protection was associated in 
his mind with the hated landowner and the old Toryism. The 
strain of these opposite forces produced a singular confusion, 
and constantly, in attacking the enemy, Mr. George spoiled the 
arguments of his friends. "You cannot feed the hungry with 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 99 

statistics," he retorted to Mr. Chamberlain's singular jugglings 
with figures that acted as rebellious snakes might to an ineffi- 
cient charmer, and were constantly curling round to bite the 
magician. But the retort was not the appropriate one. It was 
a very important part of the Free Trade argument that there 
were no hungry people (to speak of) since Cobden gave them 
cheap bread. 

A very diflFerent controversy gave more appropriate em- 
ployment for Mr. George's powers of amusing invective. The 
"Chinese slavery" debates enabled him, moreover, to justify 
much that had given oflFence during the war. Condemnation 
has been heaped, Ossa on Pelion, concerning the "discreditable 
party fraud" implied in the outcry as to indentured yellow 
labour, but, whatever may be said of the politicians, there are 
now few who would deny that the crowd was right from every 
point of view in its objection to the Chinese experiment. Mr. 
Chamberlain, who, against his private feelings, was led to sup- 
port the policy introduced by his successor at the Colonial 
Office, was described by Mr. George as having "nailed the yel- 
low flag to the mast of Protection." Mr. George's attitude on 
this question was the subject of lively attack by Mr. F. E. 
Smith ^ for years afterwards. It was recalled that he had said 
to a Welsh audience : "What would they say to introducing 
Chinamen at i/- a day into the Welsh collieries? Slavery on 
the hills of Wales ! Heaven forgive him for the suggestion !" 
But though this might be eflfective in showing that Mr. George 
was one man speaking English in the House of Cofnmons, and 
quite another speaking Welsh in Wales, it seems a quite fair 
debating point. 

At any rate, whatever injury Mr. George may have done to 
his general reputation, he strengthened his position with the 
English working-classes, which had not hitherto greatly taken 
to him ; the English working-man has little sectarian feeling, 
and cannot get excited over theological niceties. But Mr. 
George's part in the Chinese controversy was after all a minor 

* Afterwards Lord Birkenhead and Lord Chancellor in the Coalition 
Ministry. 



100 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

one; leadership was shared by an incongruous group: Major 
Seely, the ex-Unionist; Mr, John Bums, and Mr. Herbert 
Samuel. Indeed, apart from the rather specialist splendours 
of the Education fight, the years between the end of the Boer 
War and the defeat of Mr. Balfour's government saw Mr. 
George obscured, not only by the considerable men he later 
eclipsed, but by more than one sheer mediocrity. The mind 
of the country was absorbed in the Tariff Reform controversy; 
what part of its thoughts could be spared from preference and 
retaliation were engaged by considerable foreign affairs; and 
on neither set of subjects was Mr. George at his best. 

There were also, perhaps, more personal reasons for this 
comparative want of progress. Practice in the City had to 
be restored; years of bad business had to be made good; now 
assured that he was bound to be somebody, he could pay atten- 
tion to matters more urgent than the "little more," however 
much it might be, in reputation. Moreover, a certain degree of 
lassitude was probable only prudential. Never sparing himself 
when the occasion justifies, Mr. George has consistently avoided 
the mistake of the student who so exhausts himself in winning 
a prize that he cannot enjoy or use it. His extraordinary 
resilience is largely attributable to his habit of sparing himself 
wherever possible, of carrying economy of exertion to the 
extreme, and withdrawing to complete relaxation when the limit 
of endurance has been reached. He had thus retired to Italy, 
recruiting from a slight indisposition, when Mr. Balfour re- 
signed. Returning to London on December 19th he entered 
the government on the same day that his old acquaintance, Mr. 
John Bums, congratulated Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman 
on making the most popular of all possible appointments. 

For some years the two had gone home together from Vic- 
toria to Clapham Junction, and there was always a certain com- 
petition to share the carriage in which they travelled, since the 
company was sure to be entertained with a frank discussion of 
the incidents of the night's sitting. It is not a little singular 
to recall that Mr. John Burns was then, in the popular eye (and 
indeed in the opinion of most politicians), the more important 
figure, with the brighter chances of a great career. On one 



EDUCATION AND RELIGION 101 

occasion, running to catch a train, the pair were noticed by a 
group of working-men. 

"There goes the Battersea cough-drop," said one — for by 
that extraordinary title Mr. Burns (who hotly resented it, and 
on one occasion expressed his disapprobation in highly prac- 
tical fashion) was then often distinguished. 

"Burns? I saw him, of course," said another. "But who's 
the man with the bag?" 

"That? That's John's private secretary," was the reply. 

The incident had a certain significence. Mr. Lloyd George 
had long been a celebrity everywhere, and a popular hero in 
Wales. He had not even yet reached quite that point in 
England; perhaps even in the height of his glory he never at- 
tained it. At any rate it is noteworthy that he has failed to 
achieve that indubitable certificate of popularity — a nickname. 



CHAPTER VTII 



IN lllM CAlilNKT 



MR. CKORGK li.ul his choice holwooti iho Postniastcrship 
ami the rrosicleiicv o{ the lH>a!cl of Trailc. Secretly 
disappointed — for he hatl hopetl \or the lloine OlVice ' — he 
acceptetl the latter hecatise. thoii<;h it carried the lower salar>*. 
it alTorded better prosjiects of promotion. (">flen compelled 
to short views, Mr. Gcorj^e has never lacked, when unemhar- 
rasseil, the capacity to see well aheail. 

Seekins;- as a cabinet minister the renewal of the conluience 
of Carnarvon IV^nni^hs. he ciMiKl. for the rust tinii- — with a 
majority of over twelve hnndred — tell himself that his seat was 
safe. The Kdiication Act had done its work in Wales, for not 
a sinc^le ITniotiist was retnnied. Tt is notable that Mr. Georg^e's 
election speeches were distinctly moderate. There were no sug- 
i^estions of a new heaven ami earth: instead, he even went so 
far as to declare that there must as yet be no dreams even of 
Old Ai;e Pensions. "Thrift, TToratio, thrift." An tmheard 
of victory had been i^ainetl by mere nei^^atives; the democratic 
CVrberns. w ith one set of teeth well into the TaritT Reformers, 
was too pre-occnpied to demaml sops from the Free Traders. 
Why then s]HMid i^ood money for nothinsf, at the risk of offence 
to a class which Mr. Georj^fc nnderstood even better than "the 
peo]ile" — namely, the little bourgeoisie of the conntr)- towns? 
Never has Mr. George been so sober antl unadventnrons as 
at this period. Perhaps the new Minister was intlnenced — 
every recrnit mnst be in some ilegree — by mere office; official 
chairs, fires, and carpets, the nnrntlled calm of a great rontine, 
the polite scepticism of men who have seen minister come and 
minister go while they carry on im|x.Mturbably — all this for a 
time makes tame and humble the heyday in the blood of the 
*Mr. Hugh Edwards, M.P., 'D. Lloyd Gt^Jrgc." 

ao3 



IN THE CABINET 708 

fiercest innovator. lint if the lioanl o^ Trarlc; liar) a sobering 
effect, even rtujrc was the aspect of the llousfr fjf ('>jmmons 
calculatcfl tf) discouraj^e any nnn<!cessary (lef>artnre horn strict 
respectahihly. Nfjnc(jnf(jrrnily fiad its Si. Martin's snniiner in 
those (lays, and the last of the l\iritans sat in serried ranks 
behind the President of the T'oard of Trade, — n)en whose 
names, perhaps not vividly remembered at Westminster, arc 
carved on innumerabh; foundation stones in the country. Mr. 
Gef>rj.H: has a marvellous kjiack of catchinj^ the tf>n(; even oi a 
momentary environment, and the tone of the Campbell- lianner- 
man parliament, despite the presence of the new Labour 
party, was safe nn'ddle-class respectability. Mr. C^hurchill 
mij^ht find it hard always to tune his ton^^ue to the drone of 
the harmonium. Mr. Georji^e, with no inconvenient ancestors, 
exfK-rienced little difTicuIfy in rivalling the perfect decorum of 
Mr. John Burns. 

There was thus no impediment to the rapid manufacture of 
a new ](.-^cn(]. The irresjjonsible rlema^^o^ue was now revealerl 
as the eminently businesslike man of affairs; the master of 
savage invective as a "king of smiles." Mr. George's minis- 
terial dej)r;rtment was perfect. Tie made himself accessible, 
took especial pains to conciliate men of hostile political opinions, 
treated inquirers in the House with a winning politeness to 
which they were quite unaccustomed, and displayed an engaging 
modesty, almost shyness, in piquant contrast with his audacity 
in opposition. It was noticed that he rarely stood by the 
brass-bound box which ministers thump to emphasize their 
points, and that a considerable time elapsed before he took 
liberties of any kind with the furniture or exposed the soles of 
his boots after the hardened Front Bench manner. Even to 
the attendants at the I louse he seemed to make a fxjint of show- 
ing that office had not inflated. "During thirty years," an old 
servant of the Faithful Ojmmons once declared, "I have only 
known one member whose manner and way of speaking difl 
not change after becoming a minister. 1 hat one is Mr. Lloyd 
George." 

A rather partial biographer,' remarking on Mr. George's 
*Mr. Harold Spender. 



104 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

skill in negotiation, contrasts his methods with those of his 
predecessors. They, acting in the "bureaucratic spirit of the 
olden days," had been "accustomed to frame Bills without con- 
sulting the interests concerned." Mr. George "changed all 
that." It is not of course true that at any time ministers acted 
without ascertaining from expert sources the probable effect 
of their measures. But it is quite true that Mr. George got 
into much more intimate touch with the "interests concerned" 
than had ever been the rule. His method is well illustrated in 
the Merchant Shipping Act of 1906. Before the Bill was even 
produced Mr. George called into consultation the ship-owners 
and the seamen's representatives. The point at issue was the 
load-line which Samuel Plimsoll had years before won for 
British sailors. From the owners' point of view the load-line 
put British ships at a disadvantage ; foreign vessels, using our 
ports, were enabled, while our own ships were forbidden, to 
carry dangerously heavy cargoes, and could thus underbid in 
freights. Mr. George's measure, it was claimed, put the matter 
right without sacrificing the interests of the seaman. The 
British load-line was slightly modified, but no foreign vessel 
was allowed to enter our ports without conforming to this 
amended standard. All the "interests concerned" were satisfied. 
The safety of the sailor was not jeopardised, the owner was 
given protection against the foreigner, the humanitarian could 
even rejoice that sailors under other flags were benefited. Thus 
it was natural that Mr, George should receive general con- 
gratulation. 

To cool observers, however, it was clear that the precedent 
was capable of dangerous extension, and in fact it has been 
extended to the decided detriment of the general public. Every 
pushing and efficient minister thought it necessary to copy Mr. 
George, and it became at last almost a maxim of government 
that "settlement" is achieved when a compromise has been 
reached between the rival claims of "interests" which might be, 
and generally are, wholly careless of the welfare of the com- 
munity. 

It is not easy to see how some of Mr. George's measures as 
President of the Board of Trade passed the censorship of the 



IN THE CABINET 105 

intellectuals of a specially Free Trade government. It is less 
hard to understand that a certain kindness should have existed 
between him and the Tariff Reformers. When in 1907 he in- 
troduced the Patents and Designs Bill, he was complimented by- 
Mr, Austen Chamberlain on being already "far on the path" 
to Tariflt Reform, while Mr. Bonar Law declared that the 
measure sapped "the foundation on which the whole of our 
fiscal system is based." By this Act it was ordained that a 
patent could be revoked if, four years after it had been granted, 
the patented article was being manufactured "exclusively or 
mainly outside the United Kingdom." The Act is said to have 
worked well. Patents previously worked abroad have since 
been worked at home. But from the true Free Trader's point 
of view such interference with the untrammelled operation of 
economic law can never be justified. The astonishing thing is 
not that Mr. George conceived this Act, for he has never been 
a true Free Trader, any more than he has been a true Little 
Englander — he was never even then a Little Welshman — but 
that a cabinet elected to vindicate Cobdenic principles should 
have permitted such a betrayal of all that Cobden stood for. 
For Cobden would have argued that if patents were worked 
abroad it must be because foreign processes were cheaper or 
better, and that any profit to British manufacturers, or employ- 
ment to British workmen, resulting from restrictive legislation, 
would be far more than off-set by loss to the nation as a whole. 
For a time Mr. George was more admired on the opposition 
benches than by his fellow ministers, who failed to relish his 
dislike of "humdrum Liberalism." And his sensitive pride was 
deeply wounded by the attitude of certain grandees of his party, 
who failed to pay him the deference he thought his due. A 
good many close observers still believe it would not have taken 
much to detach him from the Liberal party at this time, and a 
certain suggestion of design is noticeable in the politeness of 
the opposition. The reign of compliments, however, was in- 
terrupted by the beginnings of the Lords and Commons quarrel 
which was to dominate the history of the next few years. An 
Education Bill designed to get rid of the grievances of the 
Nonconformists against the Balfour-Morant Act had been 



106 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

sent to the Lords, together with a Trades Dispute Bill, nullify- 
ing the Taff Vale decision.^ Lord Lansdowne, the Unionist 
leader in the House of Lords, decided, as a matter of tactics, 
to resist the first and let through the second. It had been de- 
termined to make good Mr. Balfour's claim that whether in 
office or in opposition the Conservative party should mould 
the destinies of the country, and the House of Lords was to 
kill or emasculate every Liberal Bill not supported by any 
overwhelming body of public opinion. No doubt Lord Lans- 
downe had reason in believing that in slaying the Liberal Edu- 
cation Bill and sparing the Trades Disputes Bill he was choos- 
ing ground "as favourable as possible." In the Commons 
Labour was weak and Nonconformity strong, but in the country 
Labour was a growing and Nonconformity a declining force. 
For all that the policy was ill-advised. The public at large 
might care little for Mr. Birrell's Bill. But the newer type of 
working-class elector quickly grasped the fact that there could 
be no fast travelling on the path he wanted to follow while 
the veto of the Peers remained; and it was for this reason that 
Mr. Lloyd George's denunciations of the "idle rich" were well 
received by men who had in fact (or conceived themselves to 
have) a much deeper quarrel with the industrious rich. The 
intelligent northern or midland artisan or miner could not 
possibly take very seriously, from the economic standpoint, Mr. 
George's arraigimient of families which, made great at the 
Reformation, had almost ceased to count as monsters of wealth 
in the twentieth century. But such a man did strongly object 
to what he thought the undue political power of such families, 
especially as it was exercised for the protection of those whom 
he regarded as his natural enemies. Thus it was that working- 
class audiences far more familiar with economic fact than IMr. 
George himself cheered and laughed when, representing the old 
rich as the one enemy, he inferentially approved the new rich. 
The latter, in years to come, were to show themselves not alto- 
gether ungrateful to their apologist. 

It is noteworthy of the change that had come over Mr. 

* Which made trades unions liable for damage done during labour 
troubles by their members. 



IN THE CABINET 107 

George that he rather minimised the importance of the rejec- 
tion of the Education Bill. To an audience of Oxford under- 
graduates he declared the government would not accept Mr. 
Balfour's challenge to dissolve. They would wait, he said, for 
an issue on a "much larger measure." As Mr. Asquith used 
to say, Mr. George was "getting on." The outraged feelings 
of Nonconformity, even of Wales, were no longer of the first 
importance. In another speech he instanced the rejection of 
a Plural Voting Bill as an opportunity to deal with the pre- 
sumptuous Lords, those representatives of "petrified Toryism." 
The plural voter, it seemed, was now more the enemy than 
the Catechism. The member for Carnarvon Boroughs might 
not have lost, so far, "fifty per cent of his Radicalism." He 
had certainly shed much of his enthusiasm for the cause of the 
chapel. 

To Wales, indignant besides that the government had 
allowed Disestablishment to be approached by the tortuous path 
of a Royal Commission — as if it had not long been a chose 
jugee — the relative nonchalance of the President of the Board 
of Trade was painful. He no longer spoke of the Church 
quite as befitted a hater of the "Old Enemy," and even hinted 
at "Disestablishment by consent" as an attainable ideal. At 
CardiflF, in the autumn of 1907, he neglected the religious issue 
to enlarge on secular and social questions. "H," he said, "it 
were found that a Liberal government at the end of an average 
term of office has done nothing to cope seriously with the social 
condition of the people, to remove the national degradation of 
the slum, of widespread poverty and destitution in a land glit- 
tering with wealth ; that they have shrunk from attacking boldly 
the main causes of this wretchedness, notably drink and the 
vicious land system; that they have not resisted waste of na- 
tional resources in armaments, nor provided honourable sus- 
tenance for deserving old age; that they have tamely allowed 
the House of Lords to extract all the virtue out of their Bills, 
so that the Liberal Statute Book remained simply a bundle of 
sapless legislative faggots fit only for the fire — then would 
arise a real cry for a new party, and in that cry many of us 
here would join. But if a Liberal government will tackle the 



108 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

landlords and the brewers and the peers, as they have faced the 
parsons, and try to deliver tlie country from the pernicious 
control of this confederacy of monopolists, then the Inde- 
pendent Labour Party will call in vain upon the working man 
to desert Liberalism." 

Some of the disappointed Welsh sectarians, like Mr. 
Gregsbury's constituents, went so far as to suggest that these 
remarks "savoured of a gammon tendency," and Mr. George 
was forced to argue, at various meetings, that the House of 
Lords must be stormed before Disestablishment could come. 
Beat the Amalekite first, he said : "What is the use of firing at 
Moses and Joshua?" But still Wales was hardly satisfied. It 
appeared to be tliought that part of Joshua's business was to 
make the sun stand still in Ajalon until the wrongs of Wales 
were righted, and certain old enemies, like Mr. D. A. ThomaS; 
once more dared to raise their voices in criticism. Blunt things 
were said. It was impossible, Mr. Thomas suggested, to sus- 
tain the double role of national leader and cabinet minister. 
Such a feat was certainly difficult, and doubtless would have 
been impossible for any ordinary man. But Mr. Lloyd George, 
by dint of emotional appeal — "God knows how dear Wales is 
to me," and so forth — contrived to repel the wounding insinua- 
tions that he was too much at ease in Zion in view of the woes 
of his compatriots. 

That he was considerably at ease there was no gainsaying. 
The first Education Bill, Mr. Birrell's, was "so mutilated as 
to take the life out of it." The second, introduced to "bring 
not peace but a sword" by Mr. McKenna, was withdrawn in 
favour of a third measure, fathered by Mr. Runciman, having, 
it was understood, episcopal and even archiepiscopal support. 
But in the end the primate declined it with thanks, and it was 
not pressed. "Facing the parsons," in such circumstances, 
was maliciously represented in some quarters as turning a 
back on the Nonconformists. Of course the charge would not 
bear analysis. All that could be fairly attributed to the once 
fiery sectarian was a fall in temperature specially noticeable on 
this subject, but also aflFecting his general attitude. In sup- 



IN THE CABINET 109 

porting Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's resolution ^ in 
favour of restricting the power of the peers so that "within 
the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Com- 
mons shall prevail," Mr. George spoke trenchantly, but with a 
certain moderation. The House of Lords had always mal- 
treated Nonconformist Bills; "the only Nonconformist Bill 
that was allowed to get through the first time was the Burials 
Bill; they did not mind how Dissenters were buried, so long 
as they were out of the way." The House of Lords was "Mr. 
Balfour's poodle; it barks for him; it fetches and carries for 
him; it bites anybody that he sets it on to." Every Liberal 
statesman for fifty years had always come into collision with 
it, and had arrived at the conclusion that progress was impos- 
sible until this barrier had been dealt with. 

The speech was an excellent example of Mr. George's Front 
Bench manner at this time ; there were always a few ingredients 
to give a characteristic flavour, a few others to meet special 
electoral or sectarian requirements, but the utterance as a 
whole was a reflection of the mood of the government. On the 
platform he might be somewhat shriller, but on the whole this 
was the quietest period of his career, and at the end of it he had 
acquired a reputation for fundamental sanity which was never 
wholly obscured during the contentions which were to follow. 

As already noted, this legend, was, perhaps, most powerful 
on the Conservative side of the House. Both Mr. Law and 
Lord Milner paid Mr. George high compliment for his conduct 
of the complicated Port of London Bill, and from a. very early 
period there mingled with hostility a wistful admiration — as 
one should say "What an asset, if only he were on the right 
side!" The Tariff Reformers detected a spiritual kinship; the 
progressive bureaucratic element recognized some intellectual 
affinity; the extreme Imperialists guessed that, once he had 
ceased to be a Little Wales man, he must come either to Im- 
perialism or Internationalism, and that a certain robustness and 
fullness of blood would probably bring him finally to the Im- 
perialist camp. Among the Liberal intellectuals there was 
some slight tendency to disparage Mr. George, to look on his 

* During the session of 1907. 



110 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

kind of eloquence as rather bad form, to regard him as a poHti- 
cal "genius without aspirates." On the other side, even at this 
period, due justice was done to his gift of popular appeal, and 
he on his part was not insensible to such sympathy. These 
facts were to be obscured in the noisy conflict about to open, 
but they explain many things, including the ease with which the 
second War Coalition was formed under Mr, George's chief- 
tainship. 

In April, 1908, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, broken in 
health, resigned office, and Mr. Herbert Henry Asquith became 
Prime Minister. A reconstruction of the cabinet followed. 
Mr. Reginald McKenna replaced Lord Tweedmouth at the 
Admiralty; to Mr, Lloyd George was assigned the great post 
of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Winston Churchill 
filled the vacancy at the Board of Trade. 

Mr. George's promotion was well received. "Practical busi- 
ness capacity, self-restraint, initiative, and large open-minded- 
ness, allied with the faculty of conciliation" ^ — such were the 
qualifications ascribed to the man who a few years before had 
been hunted by mobs, and a few months afterwards was to be 
denounced as the preacher of class war. Two years of fairly 
quiet administration, two years of comparative moderation in 
speech, together with the merit of having averted a great rail- 
way strike in the autumn of 1907, had had their great reward. 
Still, if the situation be examined a little closer, it is not a little 
singular that the new prime minister should have appointed to 
so important a post a politician of experience so limited and of 
a record so turbulent. Mr. George had, as the phrase goes, 
"done well," but had accomplished nothing which, to the old 
way of thinking, justified translation to an office usually re- 
served to ripe statesmanship. Now Mr. Asquith was very 
much of the old way of thinking, and moreover handicapped 
by a singlarity of taste and temper which would naturally lead 
him to belittle rather than magnify the real and solid abilities 
which underlay the surface brilliance of his lieutenant. Mr. 
Asquith's chief weakness has been an over-relish for men 

* The DaUy Mail. 



IN THE CABINET 111 

made in his own image, and consequently an undue deprecia- 
tion of types which have also their place — and an important 
one — in parliamentary government. Mr. George had never 
sat at the feet of Jowett; he represented no fixed philosophy; 
he thought and spoke loosely; he was, in short, an emotional 
empiric. All that was exactly what Mr. Asquith, on the in- 
tellectual plane, most disliked (though there was an artistic 
side of him which could appreciate the comedian and the rhe- 
torical artist) ; and it may be taken for granted that, as a free 
man, he would never have placed Mr. George at the Exchequer. 
There happened to be a singular dearth of mature ability of 
the desired kind, but in Mr. Reginald McKenna Mr. Asquith 
had, while at the Treasury, detected something like a genius 
for finance, and Mr. McKenna's mind, vigorous, clear, mascu- 
line, prosaic, and highly cultivated, was sufficiently of the 
Jowett pattern to recommend him to the Prime Minister. After 
offering the Exchequer to Mr. John Morley ^s a beau geste,^ 
Mr, Asquith would no doubt, if left to himself, have promoted 
the subordinate who, of all the younger men, seemed most fitted 
for the control of national finance. But Mr. Asquith was not 
left to himself. He soon found that, in his peculiar position — 
his succession, though undisputed, was hardly popular — he 
could not afford to begin with a first-class quarrel and Mr. 
Lloyd George contrived to make it clear that peace could be 
purchased only at one price. 

A certain antagonism between the two statesmen dates from 
this time. It did not preclude affection and admiration on the 
side of the younger man, and more than one striking display 
of chivalry on the part of the elder. But in the years to come 
Mr. Asquith, with his love of a quiet life, must often have 
reflected on the ease which might have been his if, instead of 
an artist expressing himself through the political medium, there 
had been a humdrum administrator at the Exchequer; while 
to Mr. George, conscious of his own powers, oratorical and 
strategic, there could hardly fail to occur some little prompting 
of envy, perhaps also of resentment, at the bland discourage- 
ment of so many of his enthusiasms. Mr. Asquith's discipline 

*Mr. Duparcq states that such an offer was actually made and declined. 



112 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

was generally loose; up to a point Mr. George could do very 
much as he liked, and Mr. Asquith was never weary in that 
sort of well-doing which consists in seeing a comrade through 
a scrape of his own manufacture. But he had also a genius 
for abating fervour, a knack of getting his own way in vital 
matters, and a way of asserting very quietly a superiority 
which could be extremely galling to one who imagined himself 
the vital spark of the party. In a cabinet which included 
several men of Mr. Asquith's kind Mr. George must often have 
felt little more comfortable than some fiery revivalist preaching 
before a congregation of bishops and deans. 

Every Minister tends to magnify his own office, and this 
natural weakness has been almost amusingly illustrated in Mr. 
Lloyd George's career. When he was Minister of Munitions, 
shells were the only cry; at the War Office he discovered that 
men and movements mattered most; in subordinate office he 
wished to reduce the powers of the Prime Minister; in supreme 
office he became at once almost a personal ruler. Being a man 
of this temper, it was natural that from the moment he went 
to the Treasury he began to revolve grandiose schemes to be 
carried through in the form of Money Bills, and in his very 
first speech after promotion we find him talking of saving 
money on the national defences and spending it on the "social 
reform" which in his election addresses little more than two 
years before he had rather deprecated as not yet "practical 
politics." Most conveniently he found that "Free Trade is a 
great pacificator" which was "slowly but surely cleaving its 
way through the dense and dark thickets of armaments to the 
sunny lands of brotherhood among the nations." ^ Social Re- 
form was already the object to be advertised; the German 
menace already the bogey to be ridiculed. For Social Reform 
armaments must be reduced, lest taxation should be enormously 
increased, and popularity startlingly diminished, and to justify 
the reduction of armaments the public must be made to believe 
that so long as the British traded freely with Germany she 
would never think of fighting them. 
* Speech at Manchester in support of Mr. Churchill's candidature. 



IN THE CABINET 113 

Two or three months later, ^ he went further. Why should 
we be surprised at Germany wanting to better her position at 
sea? "We started it" — with our "let there be Dreadnoughts." 
We insisted on a two-Power standard. But Germany had not 
a two-Power standard on land. "Don't forget that when 
you wonder why Germany is frightened at alliances and under- 
standings and some sorts of mysterious workings which appear 
in the Press. ... I want our friends who think that because 
Germany is a little frightened she really means mischief to us 
to remember that she is frightened for a reason which would 
frighten us under the same circumstances." 

At this time Mr. Churchill was working in strict concert 
with Mr. Lloyd George ; Germany, he said at a Welsh gather- 
ing, had "nothing to fight about, no prize to fight for, no 
place to fight in"; and we rejoiced as a nation in everything 
bringing good to that "strong, patient, industrious German 
people." 

Mr. Lewis Harcourt,^ outside the combination, helped it by 
his declaration that not for fifteen years had Anglo-German 
relations been on so satisfactory a footing. These three had 
taken quite literally the Kaiser's assurances to Lord Tweed- 
mouth that the German naval law was not aimed at England. 
Other members of the government were less ingenuous. Mr. 
Asquith, on becoming Premier, had at once put Lord Tweed- 
mouth out of harm's way, and on May 5, 1908, Lord Fisher, 
the First Sea Lord, could write,^ "Yesterday, with all Sea 
Lords present, Mr. McKenna formally agreed to four Dread- 
noughts and if necessary six Dreadnoughts next year (per- 
haps the greatest triumph ever known). . . . He tells me 
Harcourt for certain will resign." It was more nearly Mr. 
McKenna who resigned. Mr. George and Mr. Churchill held 
that four capital ships were ample, and the First Lord was 
only saved by the intervention of Sir Edward Grey, who was 
quite prepared to leave the Foreign Office if this measure of 

* At a meeting of the Peace Society at Queen's Hall, London. 

* Afterwards Viscount Harcourt. 
' To Lord Esher. 



114 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

national security were not decreed. Mr. George was thus 
worsted on the first round. 

The Budget of 1908 had been introduced by Mr. Asquith; 
it fell, however, to Mr. George to pilot through the Commons 
the Old Age Pensions Bill drafted by that statesman. He was 
at pains to say that the measure was "only a beginning"; even 
more important was provision for the sick and the unemployed, 
on account of which he was "looking for some one's hen-roost 
to rob next year'' : — 

"These problems of the sick, of the infirm, of the men who 
cannot find means of earning a livelihood, though they seek it 
as though they were seeking for alms, who are out of work 
through no fault of their own and who cannot even guess the 
reason why, are problems with which it is the business of the 
State to deal; they are problems which the State has too long 
neglected." 

At a later time it was claimed for Mr. George by too en- 
thusiastic admirers that he was the sole begetter of the pensions 
policy. The lukewarmness of his admiration for the baby, 
his insistence on the much finer children of his own breeding 
to come, are a sufficient commentary on this theory. Neverthe- 
less Mr. George wheeled the perambulator of the belittled 
bantling through the Commons with cool skill, contriving, 
moreover, always to play the part of Mr. Spenlow when the 
firm of Spenlow and Jorkins was charged with any want of 
heart. One clause of the Bill as drafted penalised model mar- 
ried couples; a husband and wife living together were to 
receive less than if they lived apart. Labour protested, but 
word had been given that the government could afford no 
further concessions that involved additional expenditure. Mr. 
McKenna was temporarily in charge when the feeling in com- 
mittee on this point became evidently rebellious. Rather watch- 
dog than plenipotentiary, he could promise nothing, and on his 
head the storm broke; he was denounced on all hands as the 
harsh, hide-bound official, without bowels or common-sense. 
Suddenly Mr. George entered, sensed the situation at once, and 



IN THE CABINET 115 

after a few words with the Prime Minister announced that the 
government would give way if no further concession were 
demanded. With the single stroke he had made a good bargain 
and given a handsome public testimonial to his own humanity. 
Everybody was satisfied, except perhaps the luckless Mr. 
McKenna, who received no compliments. 

Lord Lansdowne, who had killed the government's Licensing 
Bill, admitted Old Age Pensions to the Statute Book, while 
deploring that it would cost as much as a great war without a 
war's advantages, since "a war has at any rate the effect of 
raising the moral fibre of the nation, whereas this measure, I 
am much afraid, will weaken the moral fibre of the nation and 
diminish the self-respect of the 'people." How Lord Lans- 
downe's own moral fibre was raised by war is a matter of 
history, but that is only by the way. More relevant is the point 
that the Old Age Pensions Bill was almost the only capital 
measure the government had been permitted to make law. If 
this state of things were to continue, without fight being shown 
in earnest, the Liberal party must die of inanition. It was 
quite clear to Mr. Lloyd George that something must be done 
to raise a real, raging, devastating storm. There would have 
been no popular excitement over the Education Bill ; popular 
excitement over the Licensing Bill might well operate adversely 
to the Liberals. The moment, as a Liberal writer ^ has told us, 
had come for a great adventure. That adventure v.^s "The 
People's Budget." If the Lords swallowed "social refonn" 
in the form of a Finance Bill, well and good : the Liberals 
would have something to boast of to the electorate; besides 
the process might be repeated indefinitely. If the Lords threw 
out a "social reform" iDudget, then still better; they would be 
committing suicide; the balance of the Constitution would be 
upset, and, however little the working man cared about niceties 
of usage, he would at once see that the value of his vote would 
be gone if an indissoluble Chamber limited the power over 
finance of a Chamber liable to dissolution. In this quarrel 
there would be a fight that could only end when the pretensions 
of the Lords had been shattered. 

*Mr. A. G. Gardiner. 



116 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Revolving this notable scheme, Mr. George made in the late 
summer of 1908 a tour of Germany so important in its results 
as to be almost a part of national history. He drank, though 
"almost a teetotaller," glasses of "foaming beer" with the 
Imperial Chancellor ;^ he was entertained at the Berlin Zoologi- 
cal Gardens ; he was shown the wreck of a Zeppelin at Stuttgart. 
He studied the German system of national insurance — "a su- 
perb scheme it is," he was to say next year in introducing his 
budget — and resolved that something like it must be introduced 
at home. Incidentally he was interviewed by an Austrian 
journalist, to whom he declared himself warmly in favour of 
an Anglo-German understanding. A few weeks later Austria 
annexed Bosnia and Herzogovina, and a large step forward 
was thus taken in the direction of the Great War. How far 
Mr. George's efforts for international amity may have contrib- 
uted to the increased aggressiveness thus exemplified cannot 
be estimated. But the effect of the German visit on himself 
was considerable. The manner in which he was feted and 
flattered confirmed him in his conviction of the friendly dispo- 
sition of Germany, while he returned full of admiration for 
German bureaucratic methods — so impressed, indeed, that a 
young civil servant of the Treasury deemed it wise to "get up" 
National Insurance, and thus, attracting the notice of his poli- 
tical chief, laid the foundations of the vast if undefined power 
afterwards enjoyed by Sir William Sutherland. 

It was quite natural that Mr. Lloyd George should have 
been readily fascinated by the spectacle of German efficiency. 
His is a mind which in one mood responds to the vision of 
liberty and at another is entranced with the reality of intelligent 
despotism. He is like those Frenchmen who march to battle 
alternately singing the Marseillaise and shouting "Vive I'Em- 
pereur" ; there is no conscious inconsistency, but only the very 
common and pathetic wish to combine the advantages of incom- 
patible things. It was seen both earlier and later in Mr. 
George's attempt to be a Protectionist Free Trader; it was 
seen during the war in his desire to be impregnable in the West 
and omnipotent in the East ; it was seen during the peace in his 
*Mr. Harold Spender. 



IN THE CABINET 117 

attempts to incorporate into a single document the spirit of the 
French and the quite different spirit of the American poHcy; 
it was signally exhibited when he coupled his Irish scheme with 
conscription; it pervaded all his reconstruction plans, which 
presumed that all the advantages of State control can be com- 
bined witli all the characteristic virtues of private enterprise; 
it is to be traced in almost every measure of the Coalition 
government. 

When Mr. George said "every grain of freedom is more 
precious than radium," he no doubt partially believed it, and 
his faith was not lessened when he looked on Imperial Germany 
and found that it was good. The "large neatness" (to quote 
Mr. Wells) of the German scheme of life contrasted impres- 
sively with the large untidiness of England's; the hard-working 
aristocracy, the regimented working classes, the unlittered 
streets, the carefully utilised resources, the horror of waste and 
disorder, the State encouragements and prohibitions — all this 
seemed good, and none the worse because it made the official 
vastly important. But then there was the not-so-good — the 
Death's Head Hussar side of Germany, the side of Zabern and 
the sabred cobbler too lame to salute smartly. Well, we Britons 
need not import that side. Why not pick and choose, take the 
things that suited us and leave the things we disliked ? Keep- 
ing all our liberty, we could yet gain the benefits of German 
order and system. Such is the reasoning of the "born Coali- 
tionist." Britain, Mr. George thought after his German trip, 
should be a free and unmilitarist Prussia; the freedom of the 
Welsh mountains should be married to the order of the Krupp 
factories. He forgot (or did not think) that German 
docility and Germany militarism both spring from a peculiarity, 
racial or otherwise, which has always made Germany the home 
sometimes of despotism, and sometimes of anarchy, but never 
for long of free citizenship. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE people's budget 

j\/TR. LLOYD GEORGE'S Biuli^a^t, introduced on April 29, 
''■-■- 1909, was viewed with little favour by perhaps a majority 
of the cabinet, and with active dislike by some of the most 
powerful members. Indeed, its only whole-hearted friend 
among ministers who counted was ]\Ir. Churchill, then in 
the midsummer heat of a friendship which was soon to pass 
the solstice, and decline to a low temperature. It was only by 
sheer force of character that Mr. George overcame the timidi- 
ties of some and the outraged economic susceptibilities of 
others — the first unwilling to risk a fight with the House of 
Lords, the second averse from the importation of sensation into 
the region of high finance. Objections on the latter ground 
remained unimpaired in force by the passage of time. But 
those who looked on the Budget as bad party tactics were con- 
strained to admit error. The Budget not only brought Mr. 
George into the very centre of the political picture, where, but 
for brief intervals, he has since remained, but it certainly se- 
cured, though chiefly owing to the folly of the opposition, a 
long lease of life to a government rapidly declining in vigour. 
In the early months of the year it was clear, as one of the 
Conservative leaders claimed, that the feeling of the country 
was "predominantly Tory." With that instinct for realities 
which alone prevents ^ politics in this country from becoming 
quite insane, the average elector had suddenly realised that 
the German menace was not the invention of a caucus or a 
newspaper. He had taken quite seriously the cry for "eight 
Dreadnoughts," and in his mood of alarm talk about the cheap 
loaf, undenominational education, land values, the Church in 

* Perhaps the past tense should be used, for the instinct seems to have 
lost much of its force. 

118 



THE PEOPLE'S BUDGET 119 

Wales, and the drink trade seemed curiously empty. Strange 
panics possessed the people. There was talk of mysterious 
airships showing lights which astronomers, no doubt wishing 
to oblige the shifty administration which was their paymaster, 
explained were only shooting stars. A by-election at Croydon 
revealed an enormous turn-over in the specially sensitive Lon- 
don area. Clearly the government was distrusted on this 
question. It might contain patriotic people who "wanted 
eight," and were indisposed to wait. But then it also included 
Messrs. Churchill and George, who talked about the "sheer 
cowardice" ^ and "criminal extravagance" of additional ex- 
penditure. 

It was assumed that these statesmen dominated the cabinet. 
In fact they did not. Mr. McKenna stuck to his guns and his 
ships, and when the naval estimates were introduced on March 
i6th the defeat of the "anti-eights" was apparent. "The safety 
of the Empire," said Mr. McKenna, "stands above all con- 
siderations." The First Lord had had a hard fight, and 
according to Lord Fisher had sometimes "been practically out 
of the cabinet for twenty-four hours at a time," but he had 
won, and the memory of this defeat was quite evidently still 
rankling in Mr. George's mind when he began his Budget 
speech. 

"Spending," he said, "is pleasant; paying is irksome, spend- 
ing is noble; paying is sordid. And on me falls the labour of 
making the arrangements for the less attractive part of the 
naval programme." He dealt with the "unworthy suspicion" 
that any member of the government would risk even for an 
hour the country's immunity from invasion. But it would 
also be an act of criminal insanity to build "gigantic flotillas 
to encounter mythical armadas," and we could not aflford to 
"build navies against nightmares." If this were a door left 
open for retreat it was destined never to be used. Mr. 
McKenna stayed at the Admiralty till 191 1, spent nearly forty 
millions on new construction, and increased the annual cost 
of the navy by ten millions. Probably in 1914 Mr. George 
* Letter to Lord Esher. 



120 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

was not sorry that this "third-rate minister," ^ for whom Lord 
Fisher declared his readiness to "go to the stake," had had his 
way. 

Mr. George's Budget speech occupied four hours and a 
half, and there was a half-hour's interval for congratulations 
and beef tea. Much of the time was occupied with lengthy dis- 
sertations of little relevance to revenue. Indeed the main fault 
of the Budget, as seen in the dry light of after years, was its 
failure as a revenue-producing instrument. The speech 
abounded in promises; it bristled with taunts. It spoke of 
millions to be wrung from the Trade that lived by "swilling 
and tippling" ; of other millions to be wrung from the land of 
which the House of Lords owned so much. But it should 
have been perfectly clear from the first that the duty on which 
the Chancellor laid chief stress, the increment value duty on 
land, could not, if honestly exacted, yield much. To impose 
on mere profits in land and house investment a special duty 
of twenty per cent was, of course, easy enough. But that could 
not be an honest interpretation of "increment value" — the in- 
crease in the money worth of a site through the growth of 
population, and the progress of public improvements — and if 
the honest interpretation were accepted the proceeds of the tax 
must be (as they actually proved) not worth for many years to 
come the trouble of collection.- Nor was the undeveloped land 
duty a very formidable affair. The real venom of the Budget 
lay in the increased income tax, super-tax, and death duties, 
which hit rich men of all kinds, and in the increase of stamp, 
motor-car, spirit, and tobacco duties, which affected every 
class. 

It is true that Mr. George, by his apocalyptic language, gave 
an impression that the "hen-roosts" had been marked down for 
a far more serious plunder in future. "This," he said, "is a 

*The Daily News. 

' For the financial year 1914-15 the cost of the Land Valuation Depart- 
ment was £760,000. Receipts for the new land taxes during the same 
period were: 

Increment value duty £48,316 

Reversion duty I9,3I3 

Undeveloped land duty 8,651 

The taxes were abandoned as useless and costly in 1920. 



THE PEOPLE'S BUDGET 121 

war budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable war- 
fare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help hoping 
and believing that before this generation has passed away we 
shall have advanced a great step towards that good time when 
poverty and wretchedness and the human degradation that 
always follow in their camp will be as remote to the people of 
this country as the wolves which once infested their forests." 

The Budget at first produced no shock among the squires 
who were supposed to be its chief victims. Exposed to deco- 
rously searching criticism it would have fallen, without doubt, 
a little flat, and would certainly not have saved the Liberal 
government from defeat at the polls at the next General Elec- 
tion. But certain Conservative leaders agreed at this time to 
imitate the dog in Goldsmith's ballad. "To serve some private 
ends," they "went mad, and bit the man" — and it was not the 
man who died. There are few instances of an insanity, so de- 
liberately assumed by a few, almost instantaneously affecting 
whole classes. Grave financiers denounced the Budget not (as 
they might well have done) as unduly political, but as a chal- 
lenge to every stable interest. Landowners were frightened 
with stories of a horrid conspiracy of which this was only the 
first move. A new Domesday Book was to be compiled ; their 
land was to be valued, and valuation, clearly, was a step towards 
complete confiscation. Everybody with a couple of hundred 
pounds was told that "property" must combine against the 
"little Welsh attorney," the common foe and oppressor of all 
substantial citizens. 

We have seen what Mr. George hoped to achieve by the 
Budget. His adversaries played his game for him much better 
than he could possibly have played it himself. His one great 
peril was a cool and critical examination of his proposals. The 
Budget had been advertised long beforehand as a thing to 
shake mankind. H Conservative mankind had refused to be 
shaken, if it had calmly examined all the proposals about 
afforestation, the development fund, the new Domesday 
Book, the army of German-model bureaucrats to be unproduc- 
tively employed in doing what was either not worth doing or 
what people could do much better themselves, the scheme of 



122 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

the Budget could have been killed with ridicule. There was 
nothing improper in any of these taxes as taxes; there was 
much to be criticised in the plans they were to finance. They 
implied a bureaucratic idea of government which was certainly 
not to the taste of the British people at that time. Mr. George 
had drunk something more potent than honest lager beer from 
those foaming tankards in Germany. With his mind full of 
the vision of a Germanised bureaucratic England, he saw his 
legion of land valuers, not as a burdensome expense, but as a 
splendid advertisement of national efficiency; his insurance 
cards and stamps not as an annoying complication but an equip- 
ment marking this country as in the first line of progress. 

In the days of the Boer War he had played at soldiers ; he was 
now playing at officials. In short, the Budget of 1909 was not 
the work of a financier, great or small, it was the product of a 
considerable poet, working in the expensive medium of politics. 
The one thing necessary for the destructive critic was to para- 
phrase his most striking poem into very ordinary prose. The 
one thing Mr. George's critics actually accomplished was to 
create an atmosphere in which the poet's frenzy had its fullest 
chance. ** 

Left alone, Mr. Balfour would have given Mr. George little 
help. His first criticisms on the Budget were slightly satirical 
and wholly commonsense. Though, in Mr. George's references 
to the Liquor Trade, he afifected to hear "the swish of the 
scorpions," he merely expressed scorn for the futility of the 
immediate proposals regarding land, and was inclined to dwell 
rather on the abolition of the old Sinking Fund. On the 
Liberal side, there was a broad hint of compromise ; in Whig- 
gish opinion the land taxes might as well be dropped, as pro- 
ducing much cry for very little wool. 

But on both sides were zealots panting for a fight, journalists 
of the epileptic kind, rebels against the "old gangs" of both 
parties, young politicians with ambitions, old politicians with 
grudges, and a quite honest body of frightened people. A 
Budget League and an Anti-Budget League were formed, 
which of course meant that a number of good people acquired 



THE PEOPLE'S BUDGET 128 

a vested interest in whipping up excitement. The really queer 
thing, however, was the manner in which Budget lunacy affected 
the cold hard men of the world of finance, those whom our 
novelists and playwrights represent as above the sway of vulgar 
passions. Thus Lord Rothschild, forgetting the caution which 
generally distinguishes men of his race and calling, consented 
to make a chiefly inaudible protest against the Budget at a 
City meeting. It was a rich gift to the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. "We are having too much of Lord Rothschild," 
retorted Mr. George at a political luncheon the day after : — 

"We are not to have temperance reform in this country. 
Why? Because Lord Rothschild has sent a circular to the 
Peers to say so. We must have more Dreadnoughts. Why? 
Because Lord Rothschild has told us so at a meeting in the 
City. We must not pay for them when we have got them. 
Why ? Because Lord Rothschild says no. You must not have 
an estate duty and a super-tax. Why? Because Lord Roths- 
child has sent a protest on behalf of the bankers to say he won't 
stand it. You must not have a tax on reversions. Why? 
Because Lord Rothschild as chairman of an insurance com- 
pany said he wouldn't stand it You must not have a tax on 
undeveloped land. Why? Because Lord Rothschild is chair- 
man of an industrial housing company. You must not have 
Old Age Pensions. Why? Because Lord Rothschild was a 
member of a committee that said it could not be done. Are 
we really to have all the ways of reform, financial and social, 
blocked by a notice board : 'No thoroughfare : By order of 
Nathaniel Rothschild' ?" 

Iti the Commons the Budget proposals were for seventy- 
three days the subject of debate. There were several all-night 
sittings, and five hundred and fifty divisions were taken. The 
closure was seldom used ; only eight times in all. Mr. George, 
it seemed, cared little how much time was devoted to his great 
measure, and was even reconciled to the dropping of a Welsh 
Disestablishment Bill. This concentration of purpose involves 
some personal suffering. For weeks a victim of neuritis, he 
appeared night after night with his arm in a sling. It was no 
uncommon thing for him to speak twenty times in a single 



124 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

sitting. Sometimes he would go out early in the morning, with 
Mr, Churchill, for a cup of coffee or a cigar, but he was seldom 
away more than half-an-hour, and never failed to relieve the 
sentinel — Mr. Haldane, Mr. Ure, or Mr. Herbert Samuel — 
whom he had left on duty. Generally his eye wandered towards 
closing time to the grille, behind which Mrs, George sat watch- 
ing him. When progress was reported he would look up with 
a smile and a sigh of relief, toss his papers into his despatch 
case, and a few moments later husband and wife were crossing 
Whitehall to 1 1 Downing Street. 

The resistance of the Conservatives in committee was chiefly 
entrusted to Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who raised his debating 
reputation by resource and pertinacity. There were special 
champions for special interests, and Mr. F, E. Smith blazed 
everywhere like a meteor, "wagging his tail of phosphorescent 
nothingness across the steadfast stars." On the whole the 
arguments inside the House were moderate; they were chiefly 
to the effect that the Chancellor, in providing about sixteen 
millions of additional revenue, had done so in the most disturb- 
ing and unsound manner. It was outside the House that all 
the sound and fury arose. 

The commotion was brought to a climax by Mr. George's 
Limehouse speech at the end of July. To understand the effect 
of this speech it is necessary to remember that there was real 
dread of "Socialism," and people were not simply thinking of 
the Budget, but asking that very old question, "Where is all 
this going to end?" So, when Mr. George talked about "mak- 
ing war on poverty" he was read as wanting to make war on 
everybody who was not exactly poor. He began by talking 
about the duty of the State to the poor. "It is rather hard that 
an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the 
tomb bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns 
of poverty. We cut a new path for him — an easier one, a 
pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn. We are raising 
money to pay for the new road — aye, and to widen it, so that 
two hundred thousand paupers shall be able to join in the 
march." 

The reference was, of course, to an extension of the Old 



THE PEOPLE'S BUDGET 125 

Age Pensions Act. The simile was perhaps not well chosen; 
a right of way on such a scale through "waving corn" would 
appeal neither to the farmer nor to the surveyor. But neither 
Limehouse nor the country was disposed to be critical on such 
a minor point. The speech was never examined in detail but 
attacked or defended on its general tone. Never, since the 
"ransom" days of Mr. Chamberlain, had a minister of the 
Crown spoken in such frank terms of rich and stately people. 
A respect for wealth as wealth had grown rapidly during the 
thirty years that separated the Budget from the unauthorised 
programme, and to many who agreed with him in the main it 
must have seemed that Mr. Lloyd George, in speaking of "very 
shabby rich men," was guilty of a species of blasphemy. 

To those who contended that the same arguments which 
would justify the increment duty would also justify similar 
taxation on a doctor's practice increased through the natural 
growth of population. Mr. George replied by denying that 
there was any comparison. The landlord did not earn his 
wealth ; he did not even receive it or spend it himself ; "his sole 
function, his chief pride, was the stately consumption of wealth 
produced by others." What of the doctor, who visited our 
homes when darkened by the shadow of death, who by his skill, 
his trained courage, his genius, "wrings hope out of the grip 
of despair, wins life out of the fangs of the great destroyer"? 
To compare his reward with the wealth that poured into the 
pockets of the landlord was a piece of insolence. 

As to the dukes — "Oh, these dukes, how they harass us!" — 
he adduced a number of instances of the manner in which they 
had profited by their monopoly in land. Among them was the 
sad case of Mr. Gorringe, the draper of Buckingham Palace 
Road. Mr. Gorringe had had a lease of his premises at a few 
hundreds a year from the Duke of Westminster. When the 
lease came to an end Mr. Gorringe was told that the ground- 
rent in future would be £4,000 a year, that he must pay a fine 
of £50,000, and must build huge premises at enormous expense, 
from the plans approved by the duke. "All I can say is this : 
If it is confiscation and robbery for us to say to that duke that, 
being in need of money for public purposes, we will take ten 



126 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

per cent of all you have got for those purposes, what would 
you call his taking nine-tenths from Mr. Gorringe?" 

The prose of the transaction could not support the picture 
of a ducal Shylock carving the flesh of an oppressed trades- 
man, but, as Mr. George said, it was the system he was attack- 
ing, not individuals: "it is not business, it is blackmail." He 
attacked the coal royalty system also with an emphasis which 
must have proved embarrassing at a later period, when he had 
to controvert much the same arguments from Labour leaders. 

"We are placing burdens," he ended, "on the broadest 
shoulders. Why should we put burdens on the people? I am 
one of the children of the people. I was brought up amongst 
them. I know their trials, and God forbid that I should add 
one grain of trouble to the anxieties which they bear with such 
patience and fortitude. When the Prime Minister did me the 
honour of inviting me to take charge of the national Exchequer 
at a time of great difficulty I made up my mind, in framing 
the Budget which was in front of me, that at any rate no 
cupboard should be barer, no lot should be harder. By that 
test I challenge you to judge the Budget." 

This speech was spoken without passion, and the tones were 
seldom louder than the conversational level. Nobody was 
more surprised than Mr. George himself at the storm it pro- 
voked. He seems genuinely to have believed that he was mak- 
ing a serious contribution to the discussion of the land and 
leasehold system. The immediate effect of the speech, indeed, 
was to make easier the path of the Budget. Hitherto it had 
not been altogether a party success. The richer Liberals, who 
had always hated it, had on certain points voted with the 
opposition, on one occasion to the number of twenty-three. 
But Limehouse showed these malcontents that serious resistance 
would be a grave matter; Mr. George could not have spoken 
with such confident audacity had not the Prime Minister at last 
come on his side. The shrewder leaders of opposition, too, 
could see that, without a Liberal revolt, uncompromising oppo- 
sition would be disastrous. Almost immediately came a sug- 
gestion of compromise, and Mr. J. L. Garvin ^ was reproved for 
"•Editor of The Observer. 



THE PEOPLE'S BUDGET 127 

talking nonsense about killing the Budget in the House of 
Lords. The "modern Jack Cade," as Sir Edward Carson called 
Mr. George, seemed to have command of the situation. At the 
end of July there was general talk of surrender, and the Daily 
Mail — that sure political barometer — began to speak of the 
"greatness" of many of Mr. George's plans. Lord Rosebery, 
on the other hand, declared that the Liberals were moving on 
the path that leads to Socialism, and on that path he would not 
follow them an inch. "Any form of Protection is an evil, but 
Socialism is the end of all, the negation of faith, of family, of 
property, of monarchy, of empire." 

This croak from the withered branch was welcomed, but it 
would have carried little weight in itself. The opposition to 
the Budget, which seemed to be collapsing just after Lime- 
house, was galvanised into new and feverish life from another 
quarter. The extreme Tariff Reformers desired only to pre- 
cipitate an election, which, being exceedingly bad judges of a 
political situation, they conceived could be advantageously 
fought on the issue of a Budget rejected by the House of Lords. 
From the first the journalistic dervishes of the party had 
chanted a shrieking monotone to this effect. But now a more 
dignified voice took up the cry. Lord Milner, emerging sud- 
denly from pensioned and honoured ease, suddenly entered the 
political arena; Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, from his retirement, 
was induced to write that he hoped the House of Lords would 
"see their way to force an election" ; and this pronouncement 
of course had for many people, especially in the Upper House, 
the authority of a Papal Bull. The Budget was lost, and Mr. 
George's future, which to a cool observer might have seemed in 
some peril, was saved. 

For, left to itself, the Budget would have gone through in 
humdrum fashion; it would have done little to satisfy the 
gigantic expectations its author had raised ; and in its failure he 
might well have been involved. It is exceedingly doubtful 
whether the English people would not before long have re- 
sponded to the stimulus of speeches of the Limehouse kind. 
One was good enough fun ; a series would have provoked a re- 
vulsion of feeling. Landowners are not in England an unpopu- 



128 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

lar class. In London they are good customers and their doings 
add an interest to the picture papers. In the country, if they 
rouse no passionate sense of loyalty, they are disliked much less 
than the plutocratic settlers from the great towns. Mr. George, 
with his Welsh memories, had mistaken English psychology, 
and his error was shown in the persistence with which he at- 
tacked what it was then the fashion to call the backwoodsman 
Peer — a type, quiet and not unuseful, for which many an Eng- 
lishman who dislikes the political and plutocratic aspect of the 
Peerage has a real kindness. The late Lord Penrhyn might be 
a real ogre in Wales; the late Lord St. John of Bletso, whom 
Mr. George dragged at random from his obscurity (to the poor 
nobleman's intense discomfort) was simply a squire well 
enough liked by tlie very few people who cared anything about 
him. 

The whole business of the Budget was, indeed, curiously 
anachronistic, and it could never have been but for the very 
peculiar character and circumstances of Mr. George. "II me 
faut des emotions," said the Frenchified young lady in Pen- 
dennis. Mr. George has always interpreted politics in terms of 
emotion, and the changes in his ideas precisely followed the 
changes in his life. In 1909 he was still not out of his Welsh 
period, only just emerged from the grim struggle to make both 
ends meet, and his views were coloured by "David Lloyd's" 
prejudice against the landowner and all that he stood for. That 
mood was to last for a few years longer. Under the influence 
of comparatively easy circumstances and golf with admiring 
rich men, it had almost passed when the accident of the Marconi 
affair served to revive it. Then another great emotional im- 
pulse swept it away, so completely that the begetter of the 
great increment duty could without a paternal pang, even with 
an unfeeling jest, view the murder of his child. For if Mr. 
George, by the nature of his circumstances, seldom takes long 
views of the future, he is even less incommoded by memories 
of his past. With the happy nature of the Sultan's daughter 
in Boccaccio, he has been able to pass from experience to ex- 
perience, and from adventure to adventure, while preserving a 
virgin freshness. 



THE PEOPLE'S BUDGET 129 

If he had been defeated on the Budget he would no doubt 
have done something fresh as a sensation, whether in govern- 
ment or in opposition. But there would have been some break, 
and in that interval much might have happened. The op[>osi- 
tion extremists, by enlarging the Budget issue until it over- 
shadowed every other question, saved Mr. George from the 
possibility of decline, fall, or immediate metamorphosis. 
Henceforward he was supported by the whole strength of his 
party, and even in a very tight corner he could not be aban- 
doned. 

"Only one stock has gone down badly," said Mr. Lloyd 
George ^ at the end of the committee stage of the Finance Bill. 
"There has been a great slump in dukes." "The Lords may 
decree a revolution," he exclaimed, "but the people will direct 
it." Nervous people heard the rattle of the tumbrils and the 
click of the guillotine in his peroration. 

"These," he said, "are the questions which will be asked at 
the next election, and the answers are charged with peril to the 
order of things the Peers represent ; but they are charged with 
ripe and refreshing fruit for the parched lips of the multitude 
who have been treading that dusty road along which the people 
have marched through the dark ages which are now merging 
into the light." 

Possibly it was the contrast between the Jacobin tone and 
the very middle class figure of the orator which misled the 
Unionist chiefs, and made them the more ready to follow 
Lord Milner's advice and "damn the consequences." It was 
well enough to denounce Mr. Lloyd George as a sort of political 
Hammer of God. It was good enough propaganda to talk 
about the revolutionary insanity of the Budget. It was quite 
permissible to picture the Chancellor as an enemy of all social 
decencies, so that one duke would not have him at Blenheim 
and another wanted to put him, with that other fierce demo- 
crat Mr. Churchill, "in the middle of twenty-couple of dog- 

' Newcastle, October 7. 



180 ISIU. l.LOVl) (JKOIUIE 

hoinuls." Hut, alter l.iinclu>nsc, a i;ih>i1 many oi the extreme 
C\>iisorvatives ftniiul sometliini; ilisarmiui; in Newcastle. An- 
swers wliieli hail the iU>uhle hnnlen of sustaitiiiij; i)eril to the 
Peers ami ripe ami relreshini; fruit for the imiltitmle would 
have {oo nuuh to do to he i;enerally harmful. The hotheads 
ci>mmitted the doui)le mistake of thitikinj^ now tint nnich and 
now too little oi Mr. 1 .loyd (ieori;e, and at this jimetme they 
nude the even nune serious mistake of forgjettinj:^ that, if the 
ChatieelliM- oi the l\xehequer were not a very serious revolu- 
tionary, Mr. .Vsquith was an exeeedin^ly serious eiMistitution- 
alist. The men who then qave direetion io Unionist opinion 
altoji'ether under ratetl the gravity o\ the eonstitutional issue. 
Thev were one and all tirmly convinced that the working man 
cared nothing; whatever for the ancient doctrines concernini; 
money hills. .And nndouhtedly they were rii^ht in so far that 
the wiM'kinj; man was little concerned with technical justil'ica- 
tiiMis and ohjectiiMis. Ihit they were calamitously wroni;' in 
supposing' that he would tolerate the smallest transfer of power 
from the elcctcil to an hereditary 1 Kmisc. The vote had hrought 
him imnimerahle imnuiiiilies and ad\aiita!;es. in priviici^e and 
solid money, and only very recently he had had two examples 
of its value in Old .\i;e rensions and the Trades Oisputes Hill. 
X'ery little reflect ion mii;ht have isstued the followers of Lord 
Milner that on such an issue they could only win hy an elec- 
tiM^al miracle. Ihit thoui;h there was much clevertiess in the 
party, it was sini::ularly devoid of the native saj;acity ci>nnnon 
amoni; hai^Iishmen oi gootl siuMal position, ami indeed it is 
more than a coincitlence that the U\ulers were mostly tuen of 
non-English tradition. C\MiMnal. Irish, ami German. 

Before the Budget reached the House of Lords Lord Lans- 
downe amuninced his intention, in iletiance i^f all accepted prece- 
dent, to move that the ILnise withhold its assent until the 
measme hail heen suhmitted to the judgment of the country. 
The dehate had not proceeded far when the true strength of 
the Liheral position hcgan to dawn on the ill advised and tni- 
fortunate peers. They had come with the ititention of quench- 
ing incendiary flames. They were actually confronted with 
calm but cogent argiinieuts against raising questions which 



THE PEOPLE'S BUDGET 131 

involved not only the privileges of the House of Commons, 
sanctioned by centuries of usage, but that of the Crown itself. 
In short, the tables were turned ; they now wore the Jacobin 
cap they had fitted on Mr. George's head; they were the revolu- 
tionaries, the disturbers of established order, the openers of 
flood-gates, and so forth. The Liberal peers took a relish in 
mingling their arguments against rejection with criticism of 
Mr. George. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was denounced 
by the very men who pleaded that his Budget should not be 
rejected. Lord Ribblesdale speaking of dukes as "charming 
people" and of their assailant as "half pantaloon and half high- 
wayman," was as earnest against Lord Lansdowne's counsel as 
the Archbishop of York, who explained that Mr. George's 
outbursts were to be accounted for by "mysterious possession 
of the Celtic temperament which is called the Hwyl," which, 
he added, "makes the speaker say he knows not what and ex- 
cites the audience they know not why." The pro-Budget 
speeches must, in short, have been rather more uncomfortable 
reading for Mr. George than the attacks. But it was too late 
for subtlety, humour, or common sense to assert their sway. 
The peers paid the penalty of a pathetic and unreasoning loy- 
alty to imprudent leaders, and by 350 votes to seventy-five they 
decided much more than the fate of Mr. Lloyd George's first 
Budget. 

It naturally fell to Mr. Asquith to state to the House of 
Commons the case for what he considered constitutional prin- 
ciples, and what Mr. Austen Chamberlain called "legal pedan- 
tries." 

Mr. Lloyd George reserved his thunders for a gathering 
on December 3 at the National Liberal Club. Who, he asked, 
were the peers who had thrown his Budget into the street? 
Lord Lansdowne, he thought, had been forced into his position : 

"Who is really on the other side? Lord Curzon unmistak- 
ably. , . . Lord Curzon is not a very wise or tactful person. 
All I would say about him is this — I think he is less dangerous 
as a ruler of the House of Lords than as a ruler of India. For 
further particulars apply to Lord Kitchener. And if you want 
any more information you might apply to Lord Midleton. 



182 JSIH. LLOVl) (^K01U;K 

1 will s;iy iu> move oi him. Thcti tlioro is Lord Milner. There 
is (1110 thiiii; iti ct>inmoii l)ct\vooii Lords MihuT ;uul (.'tir/.oti ; 
tliov aro hiith very clever men but thev both belong to that 
class oi clever men which has every gift except the gift of com- 
mon sense. Look at the twH> pro-ciMisnls who took part in the 
(.lebate : Loril Cromer atlvising that the Hill shouKl not be 
thrown out; the other. Lord Milner, advising (hat it should be 
thrown out. Lt)rd L romer is tiie man. who, liuiling a prtnince 
devastated by its govermnent, desolated by its war, left it a 
land ot abiiunding aiul smiling prosperity. The other fmitul a 
smiling land — prosj>erous, leaping into great wealth, — ami left 
it. after two years of mismanagemeiU atul miscalculation, a 
scorched and blackened desert. 1 le has a peculiar genius for 
rutming institutions and countries into destructive courses." 

Such personal remarks were in the fair cut and thrust of 
controversy, but in view of Mr. Cieorge's subsequent relations 
with the two Leers so tartly portrayed, they are worth re- 
calling. It was to Lord Milner. the man of ''peculiar genius 
\ov nnuiing institutions antl countries into destructive courses" 
they looked in U)i8 when the ix\ice of Europe had to be 
settled. U was to Lord C^uzon — "not a very wise or tactful 
person" — that he eiUrusted the country's foreign atYairs. \'et 
the characters of these two Peers, whatever they tnay be. were 
fully developed, and even fully revealed, in U)Oi). 

C^n the constitutional issue Mr. George, j>erhaps wisely, said 
nothing. Pri>bably he said just as much as he cared, llis main 
preiiccupation was to blacken the character of Lords in general, 
as neither toiling nor spinning, nor weaving, nor luilding a 
plough — at this jx-riod he discovered a great virtue in the 
Labour representation in the House of Commons — and to add 
a specially jetty jx^lish {o owe or two of his most prominent 
enemies. "With all their cunning," he cried, "their greed has 
overborne their craft, and we have got them at last." 

It was the soletnn truth. Tn such a quarrel a party which 
had Mr. Asquith. his W'higgish nature almost transfigured by 
the Lords' sacrilege, to guide it. and Mr. Lloyd C^ieorgc to sup- 
ply electioneering steam, was invincible. 



CHAPTER X 

THE LOKDS' VKTO 

DURING the first electirm of 1910, Mr. Lloyd George, like 
th(* s]jirit in 'J'he I'empest, "flamed amazement," and of 
those who heard him 

"Not a soul 
But felt a fever of the mad, and jjlayed 
Some tricks of desjx.Tation." 

Whether this "dainty Ariel's" efforts were wholly to the 
satisfaction of Prcjsjjero Asfjuith is another question. The 
Prime Minister would doubtless have dispensed with many 
"dreadful thunrlerclaps" and "sulphurous roarings." Cer- 
tainly Mr. Asquith would have preferred attacking a Peer on 
grounds other than that "he has one man to fix his collar and 
adjust his tie in the morning, a couple of men to carry a boiled 
egg to him at breakfast, a fourth man to open the door for him, 
a fifth man to show him in and out of his carriage, and a sixth 
and seventh to drive him." ' lie would not have asked a 
South London audience if it had seen "many Dukes in the 
Walworth Road" or if before throwing out the Budget "any 
Earls had left their visiting cards." He can hardly be imag- 
ined as telling the Duke of Rutland and the Duke of Beaufort 
that they "ought to be gentlemen before they became noble- 
men," or Lord George Hamilton that he was "the hungriest of 
a hungry family." ^ Nor would Mr. Asquith have thought it 
necessary to dilate, as Mr. George did elsewhere, on the sup- 
posed inevitaljle cf;nncction between German jjrotectionism and 
the Teutonic taste for black bread and "offal." ^ 

* Speech in Carnarvonshire. 

* Speech at I'^almouth. 

* Speeches at Reading and Falmouth. 

»33 



134 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Nevertheless these things had their due part in the Liberal 
victory, though perhaps the fact that Mr. Churchill thought- 
lessly went to Blenheim for Christmas somewhat diminished 
the effects of his comrade's oratory. Mr. Churchill could not, 
of course, be blamed for his unfortunate origin, or for obeying 
the call of family affection; but the incident served to remind 
the vulgar of what it might have forgotten — that the Liberal 
party and "the people" were not precisely identical. 

Mr. George had indeed some food for reflection when the full 
results were known. He had himself kept his seat by over a 
thousand, but the Liberals had come back in greatly diminished 
numbers, and tliere seemed to be little doubt that the heavy 
mortality among candidates was due to the use made by the 
opposition of the German menace. But for the McKenna 
programme, and Lord Fisher's comforting assurance that peo- 
ple might "sleep in their beds," the battle might even have 
gone against the forces of "Progress." As things were, Mr. 
George could be heard sympathetically when he declared that 
a duke was a more present danger than a Death's Head Hus- 
sar. But he had been warned that "Social Reform" was no 
all-powerful lure, and that, while peace was the desire of all 
reasonable men and women, Pacifism was the foible of a 
minority. During the election the Pacificists had been most 
active. A party of divines had gone to Germany, had been 
lavishly entertained, and had come back with Admiral von 
Tirpitz's assurance of the pain he felt because his "explicit 
personal assurances" that there would be no acceleration of 
German naval construction had not been accepted by the 
British Government. The report of these favoured tourists 
was given much prominence, and on the strength of it Mr. 
McKenna was invited to explain his discourtesy to the chief 
of the German Admiralty. But these efforts completely failed 
to create an anti-Dreadnought issue, and the fact was not lost 
on Mr. George, and from this time he was impelled to study 
the German question from a new angle. The conversion was 
not instantaneous, and this convert, like others, was subject 
to backsliding; but the election of 1910 may be regarded as a 
turning point in Mr. George's career. He did not, like Mr. 



THE LORDS' VETO 135 

Churchill, become abruptly a Big Navy man; there were even 
times when, under the influence of peculiar circumstances, he 
seemed to be more than ever confirmed in the "building against 
nightmares" mood. But we are conscious of a difference; it 
is no longer the man, but only the politician, who talks Paci- 
ficism. 

The year 1910 began with one election and ended with 
another. The interval was occupied wholly with the constitu- 
tional question and the legislation necessary by the death of 
King Edward VII. It was a year in which Mr. Lloyd George 
claimed but a small share in public notice, though the part he 
played behind the scenes was not unimportant. Whatever he 
may have been at other times, Mr. Asquith was certainly mas- 
ter of his own cabinet during the whole constitutional episode, 
and he had no notion of relegating so delicate an operation as 
the removal of the Lords' veto to the rude surgery of his Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer. In many things Mr. George does not 
want finesse, but this was not likely to be one of them. He 
would have used the axe. Mr. Asquith, as a constitutional 
connoisseur, must have lost pleasure in the business had it not 
been accompanied with all the pomp of a major operation. The 
mind of the one was concentrated on the end. The other was 
also vastly interested in the means. But though his was a sec- 
ondary, when it was not a secret, part, the year was to afford 
excellent practice for those gifts for secret negotiation which 
in Mr. George are scarcely inferior to his capacity for popular 
appeal. They were first employed to secure the passage of his 
Budget. The Liberal party, the Irish, the Labour members, 
and indeed the country in general, had understood from Mr. 
Asquith's declaration before the election — "We shall not hold 
office unless we can secure the safeguards which experience 
shows to be necessary for the legislative utility and honour of 
the party of progress," — that he had already obtained "guar- 
antees" from the King — in other words, that he had been as- 
sured that if the Lords refused to pass a Bill limiting their 
own power of veto new peers sufficient to make a majority for 
the passage of the measure would be created. 



136 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

On the very day of the opening of Parliament, however, 
Mr. Asquith stated that he had neither asked for nor received 
such guarantees, and that it would have been improper to ask 
for them. The announcement caused bitter disappointment 
among the Radicals. But the immediate difficulty was with 
the Irish. The government were now dependent on the Irish 
vote, and the Irish disliked many features of the Budget. They 
would have voted for it, or for anything else not touching their 
religion, if doing so meant removing the House of Lords from 
the path that led to Home Rule. But without a fair prospect 
of that they were sure to make trouble over the increased whis- 
key duty, and they might even destroy the government. Mr. 
George had an informal meeting with Messrs. Redmond and 
Dillon. It was a delicate affair to arrange. Mr. Redmond, 
it appears, was doubtful whether Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward 
Grey, or Mr. Haldane were really in earnest over Home Rule, 
but had no doubt as to the sincerity of Mr. Churchill and Mr. 
George, despite the former's friendship with .the English 
friends of Ulster and the latter's well-known opportunism on 
the Irish question.^ Mr. Redmond could not have been igno- 
rant of the latter fact. What he really felt was, no doubt, that 
Mr. George was likely to be more anxious than Mr. Asquith 
to push matters to extremity against the Peers. Mr. Asquith 
had been "demoralised by society" ; Mr. George had not yet lost 
"fifty per cent of his Radicalism." However the case, the 
negotiations were wholly successful; the support of the Irish 
was given in return for "a promise in so many words" ; and 
Mr. George was enabled to inform the House of Commons that 
the government did not intend to "plough the sands," and 
would "absolutely stake their existence on the advice they 
will give to the sovereign, if ever it becomes necessary to do 
so. 

The Budget was thus secured. The Lords agreed that the 
verdict of the polls was on this matter decisive, and on April 
29, exactly a year after its introduction, the Finance Bill re- 
ceived the Royal Assent. Those who watched the ceremony 
might be excused if they detected a satire on the Upper House 
*"My Diaries," Wilfred Scawen Blunt. 



THE LORDS' VETO 137 

in the formula "Le roy remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur 
benevolence, et ainsi le veut." The ancient form might seem 
to emphasise the truth that in money matters the Crown and 
the people have direct relations, and the interference of the 
King's fair cousins the Peers is an impertinence. 

In introducing the Parliament Bill early in April Mr. Asquith 
made the Government's position perfectly clear : — 

"If the Lords fail to accept our policy, or decline to consider 
it when it is formally presented to them, we shall feel it our 
duty immediately to tender advice to the Crown as to the steps 
which will have to be taken if that policy is to have statutory 
effect in this Parliament. . . . If we do not find ourselves in a 
position to ensure that statutory effect we shall then either 
resign our offices or recommend a dissolution of Parliament. 
Let me add this, that in no case should we recommend a dis- 
solution except under such conditions as will secure that in the 
new Parliament the judgment of the people, as expressed at 
the election, will be carried into law." 

This was decisive so far as the government was concerned. 
But it left the King's attitude uncertain. He may have thought 
that the issue had been quite unnecessarily forced by the Peers, 
but on all grounds he must have been extremely anxious that 
the quarrel should not be fought out. The temper of a peace- 
loving man, the statesmanship of a statesmanlike man, the 
natural horror which every monarch must feel at the very 
suggestion of a degradation of the patrician order, all inclined 
him to postpone the matter, since he could not for the moment 
see his way to settle it. He succeeded in keeping the politicians 
at arm's length until his return from Biarritz. Then he was 
apparently confronted with the actual and imminent possibility 
of Mr. Asquith's resignation unless the contingent promise to 
create peers were given. There were three possible alternatives 
to Mr. Asquith. But Mr. Balfour could not command a ma- 
jority, and could only obtain one by recourse to another elec- 
tion, which would obviously involve the most serious dangers ; 
Lord Rosebery, also a constitutional possibility, was practically 
impossible from many points of view ; there only remained Mr. 



138 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

George, who even if the Whigs sulked in their tents might 
carry on with the aid of Irish and Labour votes, and go to the 
country on an alarmingly "advanced" programme with at least 
a sporting chance of success. One Lady C ^ who is ap- 
parently not without knowledge, declares that Mr. Asquith ac- 
tually told the King that he ought to send for Mr. Lloyd 
George in his (Mr. Asquith's) place. "This roused the King, 
who, as a rule, had good command over himself, for they all 
hate Lloyd George, and the King was quite upset by it. The 
King rather liked Churchill because he is a gentleman, but 
Lloyd George he could not stand." 

We may neglect the last allegation, though it is perhaps 
a fact of some significance that during the whole of King Ed- 
ward's reign Mr. George never acted as "minister in attend- 
ance." But if it be true that the King was "upset" there were 
reasons more convincing than any personal want of liking. 
Mr. George was then considered in many quarters a demagogue 
of the most dangerous tendencies, and, whatever his real in- 
clinations, he could hardly have succeeded to power in such 
circumstances without being forced to a policy of "thorough." 
In practice, therefore, the King would have no choice, if Mr. 
Asquith insisted on resignation in default of "guarantees," 
between accepting considerable present evils and flying to 
others altogether incalculable. 

However the case, the King's death in the midst of the crisis 
changed the whole situation. A mass of emergency legislation 
was thrown on Parliament. Decency forbade that the sincere 
mourning of the nation should be interrupted, like the Shakes- 
pearean tragedy, by a "knocking within." It may be that Mr. 
George himself ^ first officially suggested an attempt to settle 
the constitutional issue by conference; it is certain that the 
idea of a "truce of God" occurred spontaneously to many un- 
official minds. For over five months the conference remained 
in being, and though its proceedings have never been disclosed 
there is every reason to believe that on the one side the com- 
plete control of finance by the Commons was conceded, while 

* Quoted in "My Diaries," Wilfred Scawen Blunt. 
*This is stated»as a fact by Harold Spender. 



THE LORDS' VETO 139 

on the other there was a disposition to agree that in cases of 
difference on other matters decision should rest with a joint 
committee of both Houses, the Commons sending representa- 
tives in proportion to the strength of parties and the Lords an 
equal number of Liberal and Unionist peers. The Unionists, 
however, wanted to except "organic measures"; the real stum- 
bling-block was of course the particular case of Home Rule. 
It is highly significant that, after some weeks, the possibility 
of a "Federal Solution" was eagerly discussed by the journal- 
istic prophets of the Unionist party, and the prospect of some 
arrangement on these lines seems to have reached, and been wel- 
comed by, Mr. Redmond in Canada. We know that Federal- 
ism had long been a pet idea of Mr. George's. We know that 
in the words of a penetrating critic ^ he has a natural talent 
for Coalition, being "at once an explosive of party union and 
a builder of flying bridges between incompatibles." Was the 
plan which failed, but may have been so near success, that of 
the statesmen who throughout the nineties had talked of 
"Home Rule all round" when all other politicians of any prom- 
inence were divided between Gladstonianism and blank nega- 
tion? 

Though the conference failed it left two important effects 
behind it. It was killed by the feeling of the Conservative 
back benches, who, imbued with Ulster sentiment, hardly dis- 
tinguished between Federalism and any other brand of Home 
Rule. But these people could not undo the mischief which, 
from the genuinely Conservative point of view, had already 
been done. While the conference was sitting the more lively 
spirits of the party had been busily engaged in thinking out a 
democratic policy for Conservatism. Great quantities of life- 
like grapes have been produced from the Tory thorn-bushes, 
and never did thistles produce such a crop of figs. But the re- 
sult was that the programme-makers gave away most of the 
Unionist case, not only against Home Rule, but against pay- 
ment of members and other Radical ideals. Sacred things had 
not been sold, but they had been discussed as saleable, and all 
the frenzy that followed could not alter that fact. 

*Mr. Herbert Sidebotham, "Pillars of the State." 



140 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

The other effect was on the mind of Mr. George. The con- 
ference gave him for the first time the opportunity of knowing 
his enemies as well as he knew his friends ; already a little re- 
pelled by the frigidity of the Manchester School and the 
haughtiness of the Whig notables, he was in a mood to ap- 
preciate the well-developed bustling, progressive "stunt"-loving 
element in Unionism. He had always had a lively sense of 
the soul of evil in things Radically good. He could now see 
the soul of good in things Conservatively evil. 

During the conference Mr. George, except for one acrid 
speech against landlords, had preserved the truce, but when 
Mr. Asquith proclaimed a "state of war," he returned with 
vivacity to his attack on "the dukes." At Mile End he com- 
pared the landlords to "clods" ; ^ at Edinburgh he declared that 
the House of Lords was "founded on snobbery." But though 
the style was as vigorous as before, the effect of the orator was 
not quite the same. There was, indeed, nothing new for him 
to say. Granted that the House of Lords was as bad as ever, 
it could not be shown that in twelve months it had grown any 
worse. Mr. George had, in fact, ceased for the time to be the 
dominating figure. Mr. Asquith was the attacker, Mr. Red- 
mond the object of counter-attack ; and the main battle-field 
offered little scope for Mr. George's special abilities, since he 
knew very little about constitutional niceties and cared very 
little about Home Rule. Some little doubt existed as to 
whether, in view of the expanding abilities of Mr. Churchill, 
he still occupied even second place among Liberal Ministers, 
and there is a slightly pathetic note in his declaration just 
before the polls to a friendly interviewer '-^ that he was not a 
Socialist. He speaks with tlie embarrassed irrelevance of a 
simple country lady out of her depth at a highly intellectual 

*So the word is printed in all reports. But it is not uninteresting to 
note that a weekly review accounted for the specially vehement applause 
by suggesting; that another word of similar sound, with which Mile End 
was no doubt at least equally familiar, had been used by the orator. There 
is not. of course, the smallest evidence to this effect, and the incident is 
merely mentioned to illustrate the strength of feeling against Mr. George 
at the time and the willingness to use any weapon against him. 

* Mr. Harold Begbie. 



THE LORDS' VETO 141 

tea-party, is unwilling to keep silence and yet unable to follow 
the drift of the conversation : — 

"I want things done. I want dreams, but dreams which are 
realisable. I want aspiration and discontent leading to a real 
paradise and a real earth in which men can live here and now, 
and fulfil the destiny of the human race. I want to make life 
better and kinder and safer — now at this moment. Suffering is 
too close to me. Misery is too near and insistent. Injustice is 
too obvious and glaring. Danger is too present." 

The English interviewer found Mr. George no Socialist. M. 
Jean Longuet, who spoke to him shortly afterwards, was con- 
vinced that on land nationalisation he was "prepared in his 
heart to go to the lengths of our Socialistic solution," and 
that he had the "revolutionary mysticism of Cromwell's sol- 
diers." This misapprehension was considered sufficiently seri- 
ous to necessitate a special interview with Le Matin, in which 
Mr. George, for the comfort of the French bourgeois mind, 
averred that the government had every intention of maintain- 
ing a navy that would keep our command of the sea unchal- 
lenged. Everything thus ended well, and Mr. George had the 
best of both possible worlds; with the English Radicals he 
still stood for reduced armaments; in France he was the man 
who would never let the German fleet be a menace to the En- 
tente Powers. In all probability he had not yet made up his 
mind which policy to plump for, and it so happened that sev- 
eral years were to elapse before he could end this state of 
indecision. 

The further stages of the constitutional struggle have lent 
little relevance to this narrative. In this matter Mr. Asquith was 
not merely the Liberal leader, he was the Liberal party personi- 
fied ; in the conduct of the Parliament Bill through the House 
of Commons, in the manoeuvres and negotiations which per- 
mitted Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Balfour to escape though 
with heavy losses, from the full catastrophe of defeat, Mr. 
Asquith alone counted. What little help he accepted from 
subordinates came from Mr. Churchill. Mr. Lloyd George was 
excluded. His health, overstrained by the election, kept him 



142 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

for some weeks from the House of Commons, and later he 
was engaged on his insurance scheme. In the central drama 
there was no place for him ; ^Ir. Asquith, anxious to carry his 
point without a hint of revolutionary violence, preferred not 
to trust his volatile lieutenant. Discipline in the Asquith 
cabinets was normally rather lax, but on this occasion no 
chances were taken. It was part of the Asquithian plan that 
all tlie sobriety and correctitude should be on the side of inno- 
vation and that all the froth and fury should be on the side of 
the status quo. 

Nevertheless the year 191 1 was an important and successful 
one for Mr. Lloyd George. He passed a first-class measure 
destined to affect profoundly the whole social life of the coun- 
try; he won great popular credit and the personal thanks of 
the King, by the settlement of an alarming railway strike; by 
a simple resolution of the House of Commons he gave every 
member a salary of four hundred pounds a year; he made his 
first important announcement on foreign affairs ; and altogether 
he more than made up the ground lost in 19 10. 

His first task was the National Insurance Bill, which was 
deemed an uncontroversial measure, and therefore outside the 
arrangement that no contentious business should be taken until 
tlie constitutional question had been settled. That so great a 
revolution should have been thus regarded may seem singular, 
in view of the fierce and protracted conflicts over questions 
arousing much less feeling in the country. But the younger 
school of Conser\'atism had a nervous dread of touching any 
Radical consignment labelled "Social Reform," and those less 
sympathetic believed that in opposing the Bill they would oc- 
cupy "unfavourable ground." Moreover there was a disposi- 
tion to think that the actual scheme might have been very nuich 
worse. It was, in the first place, contributory, imposing obli- 
gations on the employed person as well as on his employer and 
the State. Secondly its paternalism was no more repugnant 
to the philosophy of Young England Toryism than to that of 
Fabian Socialism. On the other hand it should have been 
wholly abhorrent to Liberalism, and indeed to any school of 
thought which laid stress on the equality before tlie law of all 



THE LORDS' VETO 143 

citizens, since on the one hand it taxed one class to pay for 
privileges denied them, and imposed on another class obliga- 
tions from which the rest of the community was free. There 
had already been, it is true, legislation, like the Employers' 
Liability Act, which recognised the differing status of "em- 
ployed person" and "employer"; but never before had the 
distinction between rich and poor, or between poor and a little 
less poor, been so frankly declared a ground for differentiated 
legislative treatment. 

The Bill was described at the time, by a downright critic,* 
as leading "straight to slavery." It was certainly borrowed 
directly from Germany, where the liberty of the individual has 
never been highly regarded. But English Liberalism had 
undergone a strange metamorphosis ; the practical politician of 
every camp scorned "doctrinaire" objections; and Mr. George, 
in introducing the Bill, was no doubt justified, so far as the 
"progressive" part of the House of Commons was concerned, 
in declaring that it contained nothing which could cause "legiti- 
mate offence to the reasonable susceptibilities of any party." 
For the rest, he declared that it was a measure "that will relieve 
untold misery in myriads of homes — misery that is unde- 
served ; that will help to prevent a great deal of wretchedness, 
and that will arm the nation to flight until it conquers 'the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that 
wasteth at noonday.' " As such no less a Unionist dignitary 
than Mr. F. E. Smith declared that failure to pass it in "some 
form or other" would be an "unparalelled misfortune." 

Such opposition as there was came from the ordinary Eng- 
lishman, and still more from the ordinary Englishwoman. 
Woman, according to Meredith, will be the last thing civilised 
by man ; the domestic servant, for once in complete accord with 
her mistress, rose in revolt, and a confused clamour arose from 
all sorts of people who, without clearly understanding what 
the Bill was about, had gathered the essential fact that it 
meant very certain payments and rather uncertain benefits. 
The most serious trouble, however, was with the doctors, who 
naturally wanted to drive a harder bargain with the State than 
*In the New Age. 



144. MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

they had done with the voluntary friendly societies. Mr. 
George had a long and anxious fight with the faculty. Speak- 
ing at a conference with their representatives, "I do not think," 
he declared/ "that there has been anything like it since the 
days when Daniel went into the lions' den. I was on the dis- 
secting table for two hours." He did not care for this "wrangle 
in the sick-room" ; it was unpleasant and might well become 
unseemly, and he proceeded to argue that six shillings a head, 
denounced by the doctors as too little and by the Friendly So- 
cieties as too much, was about right. 

Ultimately he agreed to pay the doctors something more 
than he had proposed and something less than they had asked. 
In these negotiations he was well served by Dr. Christopher 
Addison, a Liberal member whose fortunes for some years 
were to be closely linked with his own. This difficulty sur- 
mounted, the Bill had a smooth passage. While many Union- 
ists exploited its unpopularity in the constituencies, all, or 
nearly all, languidly blessed it in the House of Commons. The 
Labour Party was at first doubtful. But Mr. Ramsay Mac- 
donald brought his little group of intellectuals on to its side, 
and from that moment dates the definite alignment of Labour 
with bureaucratic control and against the liberty of the indi- 
vidual. Though the Bill was denounced in the country as "the 
cheats' charter," the "most hated Bill," and the "malingerers' 
millennium," the Lords gave no trouble, but many of their 
ladies did. The Servants' Tax Registers' Defence Association 
held a meeting, supported by more than one peeress, at which 
Mr. George was denounced as "tyrant, gagger, guillotiner," 
and as endeavouring to do things unimagined by the "worst 
kings in the darkest ages of British history." This agitation 
was, oddly enough, the most effective apart from that of the 
professional men. It died not so much from its own futility, 
for there was a great deal of genuine and justified feeling 
behind it, as from the unnatural character of the alliance be- 
tween maids and mistresses. For a time London saw the mir- 
acle of duchesses and their footmen on the same platform — 
or more generally at the same drawing-room meeting — but 

^At Birmingham in June. 



THE LORDS' VETO 145 

long it could not be. A fear seemed suddenly to invade the 
aristocratic breast that the servants might imbibe "ideas," and 
become too "independent." At any rate the agitation suddenly 
subsided, and the threatened revolt against the Bill after it had 
become law failed to materialise in any marked degree. 

Some months later,^ Mr. George complained bitterly of the 
treatment he had received over this "uncontroversial measure." 
The Act, he said, "mobilised the nation" for the first time, not 
to wage war upon their fellow men, but "for the purpose of 
securing health, for securing plenty, and for driving away the 
privation and hunger which had invaded millions of homes." 
But how had this been received? 

"They have assailed it with misrepresentation, with false- 
hoods, direct, unqualified. . . . They have assailed its author 
in a way, I believe, that no minister has been assailed in my 
time. My race, my origin — they are all the topics of their 
vituperation. I am proud of both. There is one quality that 
my little race has that gives them peculiar oflfence, especially 
the dullest among them, and that is the gift of imagination. 
... I can see now the humble homes of the people with the 
dark clouds of anxiety, disease, distress, privation, hanging 
heavily over them. And I can see another vision. I can see 
the Old Age Pension Act, the National Insurance Act, and 
many another Act in their trail descending, like breezes from 
the hills of my native land, sweeping into the mist-laden val- 
leys, and clearing the gloom away until the rays of God's sun 
have pierced the narrowest window." 

A prospectus is generally better reading than a balance sheet, 
and the great Insurance Act has not actually justified the ex- 
pectations thus eloquently expressed. But whatever may be 
thought of its merits, it was an admirable specimen of Mr. 
George's practice of legislating for the "interests concerned." 
He satisfied, or attempted to satisfy, the large employers, whom 
the Act might relieve of many responsibilities, and still more 
of any burden of conscience; the employees, to the mass of 
whom, possibly, there were benefits outweighing vexations; 

*At a mass meeting in South London. 



146 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

the dcH:tors, to whom the Act was a guarantee of State income. 
The country as a whole, whicli had to pay for the measure, 
was never even considered. 

Meanwhile, in the middle of the Summer of 191 1, Mr. 
George appeared dramatically in a wholly new character. For 
the first time in his life he used, in the position of a great 
Minister, speaking the mind of a government, that kind of 
language which resounds, in menace or encouragement, all over 
the world. Moroccan afTairs had already involved, as long ago 
as 1905, an acute crisis between Germany and France. The 
Algeciras Conference had left Germany silenced but unsat- 
isfied, and now she saw her opportunity in the rapidly develop- 
ing anarchy in British politics. Internal trouble among the 
Moorish tribes had obliged France to send troops inland to 
Fez. The German Colonial party immediately declared that 
"compensation" must be obtained elsewhere, and at the be- 
ginning of July the German Government despatched a gun- 
boat to the Moorish port of Agadir. 

This blackmailing enterprise — for such quite simply it was 
— came at a dangerous time. England was in the midst of the 
constitutional crisis, and, adopting a bad fashion which rapidly 
became worse, a great number of people were already talking 
about armed resistance. In France the government of M. 
Caillaux. one of the small minority of Frenchmen who believed 
in a cordial understanding with Germany, might quite con- 
ceivably have agreed to some arrangement fatal to the Entente 
with Great Britain. Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign 
Secretary, quickly seized the nature of the situation. He knew 
that Germany had announced to the French ambassador in 
Berlin that a large slice of the French Congo would secure 
her complaisance elsewhere. On July 21 Mr. Lloyd George 
was due to speak at the Mansion House, and after an unsatis- 
factory interview with the German ambassador. Sir Edward 
prepared a carefully considered statement for him to include 
in his address. Therefore, on that night, after some remarks 
on national economy, Mr. George said : — 



THE LORDS' VETO 147 

"But T am bound also to say this — that I believe it is essen- 
tial in the highest interests not merely of this country but of the 
world, that Britain should at all hazards maintain her place 
and prestige among the great nations of the world. Her po- 
tent influence has many a time in the past been, and may yet be 
in the future, invaluable to the cause of human liberty. It has 
more than once in the past redeemed Continental nations, who 
are sometimes apt to forget that service, from overwhelming 
disaster and even from international extinction. I would make 
great sacrifices to preserve peace. I conceive that nothing would 
justify a disturbance of international good-will except ques- 
tions of the gravest national moment. But if a situation were 
to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by 
the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has 
won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing 
Britain to be treated, when her interests were vitally affected, 
as if she were of no account in the cabinet of nations, then I 
say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humilia- 
tion intolerable for a great country like ours to endure. Na- 
tional honour is no party question. The security of our great 
international trade is no party question. The peace of the 
world is much more likely to be secured if all nations realise 
fairly what the conditions of peace must be." 

The consequences of this speech were considerable. At 
home, in the noise and confusion of the domestic quarrel the 
impression could not be durable. But in Germany the words 
of Mr. George, especially because they appeared to be his own 
words, caused a wholesome shock. In disclaiming intentions 
of creating a German port on the Moroccan coast, the German 
ambassador demanded an explanation of Mr. George's speech. 
Sir Edward Grey stiflly declined to give one, and met a tone of 
unusual insolence with a tone of unusual acrimony. In France 
the speech caused even more stir. It was not of course known 
that Mr. George was being used as the mouthpiece of another, 
and his utterance gained in significance because he was gener- 
ally regarded as an advocate of peace at any price. It was 
thus a straight answer to M. Caillaux's theory that there was 
no reality in the Entente, and that France would be better 
advised to make peace with her enemy when she was in the way 



148 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

with her. The speech did not indeed prevent "conversations" 
which ended in a rather humiliating cession of French territory 
to Germany. But it led in the long run to the downfall of the 
Caillaux government, and thereafter the Entente was safe. 

Nor can it be doubted that the Mansion House speech deeply 
and permanently affected Mr. Lloyd George himself. For 
some eighteen months he had inclined towards revision of his 
former views on the futility of preparing against "nightmares." 
Now he had committed himself to the view that there really 
was such a thing as a German menace, and Sir Edward Grey, 
in choosing him to make a declaration on external policy, had 
won a remarkable victory. It was not merely that he was for 
the future bound by his own declarations. That in itself was 
little. Mr. George has what Lord Hugh Cecil described ^ as 
the opalesque mind, liable to constant change, and, like the late 
Joseph Chamberlain, is never embarrassed by the ghost of his 
dead selves. He might still, and in fact he did — at the very 
eve of the Great War — relapse into Pacificism. The real effect 
of the Agadir speech was more subtle. Mr. George had sud- 
denly discovered the fascination of foreign affairs. 

After the Agadir speech he could hardly fail to feel a greater 
man than before. Hitherto he had been steadily increasing his 
area of influence, but it was after all still parochial, though the 
parish was as large as England. First he had impressed a few 
Welsh villages, next he had made his name resound throughout 
the Principality; next he had conquered the English Radicals. 
He had successively enjoyed the horror and alarm of Welsh 
bishops, Whig politicians, landlords, and peers. Now there 
was a new thrill ; in every European Chancellery his words had 
awakened vivid emotion of one kind or another. It is not 
unreasonable to credit him with something of the rapture 
which must have seized on the directors of great popular new's- 
papers when they first discovered that foreign affairs might 
after all excite more sensation than the prettiest murder. Such 
feelings would not of course be acknowledged even to him- 
self, but they were there, and the post- Agadir Lloyd George 
could only be a rather different person from the Lloyd George 

*In the House of Commons, Feb. vj. 



THE LORDS' VETO 149 

of the Budget campaign. He might still be irresponsible, but 
he could no longer be unconsciously unresponsible in the old 
ingenuous way. He might still be parochial when profit lay 
in that, and he would certainly be always the astute electioneer. 
But he must henceforth have a respect for foreign things, an 
interest in them, a sense of their moment, a vivid impression 
of the personal glory and dignity of dealing with them. He 
would hardly want Sir Edward Grey's position without some- 
thing of Sir Edward Grey's knowledge, though that might be 
less than some imagined. But he would hardly have been 
human had he not pictured to himself that it would be pleasant 
to be Sir Edward Grey's master; to inspire rather than to re- 
produce words which startled the world, momentarily united 
all parties at home, and made national leaders of mere party 
politicians. Agadir was a new spiritual birth for Mr. George. 
Like all young things the thing born was a little misshapen 
and not a little capricious, but it was gifted with vitality, and 
it grew. 

The troublesome question of women's sufifrage had annoyed 
Mr. George, like other ministers, ever since the election of 
1906, in which so many members of the Liberty party had 
given thoughtless pledges interpreted with deadly seriousness. 
In 1 9 10 he had opposed the so-called Conciliation Bill, as tend- 
ing merely to strengthen Conservatism. In 191 1 he voted for 
another measure of enfranchisement on the ground that it was 
"more democratic"; and at a conference of the National Lib- 
eral Federation at Bristol he endeavoured to convert his party 
to the women's cause, but the effect of his oratory was a good 
deal spoiled by "exhibitions of temper" on the part of sundry 
militants. His efforts, indeed, won small gratitude. Many 
of the suffragists did not trust him; many hated him for 
political reasons unconnected with the vote. He had of course 
also to share the unpopularity attaching to any supporter of 
Mr. Asquith, then the chief enemy of the female vote. When 
he addressed a meeting of the Women Liberals' Federation one 
lady aimed a bundle of pamphlets at his head, while a male 
sympathiser threw a stone which struck his face. 



150 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Mr. George, however, took a philosophically long view. 
Foreseeing that some day the women might very well succeed, 
he returned good for evil by continuing to speak on their be- 
half, and eventually won his reward. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE MARCONI CASE 

TN one of his short stories Mr. KipHng, desiring to convey 
-^ an impression of some swift sky effect, says it was as if 
an enormous egg had suddenly been thrown with great violence 
against a colossal barn-door. Unhappily no such vivid imagery 
is available in describing political phenomena. The great land 
scheme of Mr. Lloyd George, which makes a yellow splash 
across the history of the two years before the great war, is very 
much like this smashed egg. Nobody can quite tell what it was 
like before it got smashed, for the duckings which, accom- 
panied and followed the laying of it were rather triumphant 
than descriptive, and after it came into contact with the barn- 
door it became merely an irritating, if impressive, presence, — 
a mess, in fact, that insisted in getting mixed up with all sorts 
of other things. The trouble of the present writer is that he 
cannot conscientiously follow the advice of Uncle Toby, "wipe 
it up and say nothing more about it." For it had so much 
influence on Mr. George's attitude up to the great crisis of his 
career that, while it is hopeless to attempt making any criticism, 
it cannot be wholly ignored. 

Mr. George, it seems, had designed a sequel to the Budget 
of 1909. "Those who knew Mr. George's mind in those days," 
says one who was among his most enthusiastic admirers in 
1912,^ "knew also that he foresaw and planned a first rejection 
by the Lords, an endorsement by the country, and a following 
attack on the veto, in which the peers were bound, whatever 
their tactics, to succumb. All went well as this simple, though 
far from shallow generalship foresaw. But while nothing 
miscarried the resulting situation was a difficult one." Was, 
asked the writer, in this first week of 1912, the Budget to have 

* H. W. M. in The Nation. 

151 



152 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

its sequel — the "transformation of British agricuhiire through 
the three roads of a reform of the land laws and land taxation, 
the further reform of housing, and the state control of the 
railway system?" 

Presumably this was the hoped for result of a successful 
incubation of Mr. George's great land scheme egg. But there 
were two troubles. The first was the state of government 
business, which delayed the sitting process, the second was a 
personal accident through which the egg w-as smashed. 

The goverimient had commitments to which precedence 
could hardly be denied. In the first place there was the intro- 
duction of the Home Rule Bill, in which Mr. George acqui- 
esced, though without fervour. Indeed, his silence in the 
House and the country evoked bitter remark in Ireland; it was 
described as "amazing" and not at all the requittal to be ex- 
pected, in view of the help the Irish had given in the passing of 
the Budget and the Insurance Act.^ 

On the claims of Wales there could be, outwardly at least, 
no such coolness, and when IMr. McKenna introduced the 
Disestablishment Bill Mr. George was eloquent on behalf of 
"the great Nonconformist body which picked Wales out of the 
Slough of Perdition." The effort was described by a Conserva- 
tive opponent - as simply "an old-fashioned Church and Chapel 
speech." But the very similarity to the utterances of twenty 
years before emphasised the difference. Mr. George then spoke 
with the genuine fire and force of a fanatic. He now spoke 
like one who is expected to be a fanatic, but is not in fact the 
least fanatical. There was the difference betw-een real epilepsy 
and the contortions of a soap-chewer. Once only was the old 
note sounded, and that, significantly enough, was when he dealt 
with some question of land filched in ancient days from the 
Church by ancestors of his political opponents. Thus when 
the Duke of Devonshire described the policy of the Govern- 
ment as "robbery of God," the retort came swift and bitter 
that the foundations of the Duke's own fortunes were "dese- 
crated shrines and pillaged altars." 

* Irish Independent. 
'Mr. Ormsby Gore. 



THE MARCONI CASE 153 

"Look," he cried, "at the story of the pillage of the Refor- 
mation. They robbed the Church, they robbed the monasteries, 
they robbed the almshouses, they robbed the poor, and they 
robbed the dead. Then they come here, when we are trying to 
recover some part of this pillaged property for the poor, to 
whom it was originally given, and they venture, with hands 
dripping from the fat of sacrilege, to accuse us of the robbery 
of God." 

On such secular aspects of the quarrel Mr. George could still 
revive the old fury. But it was nevertheless clear that he 
would not have been sorry to find a way out without recourse 
to long and doubtful Parliamentary warfare, and his efforts 
to reach an accommodation with his former enemy the Bishop 
of St. Asaph, caused some disquiet to colleagues more eager 
for the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill. Apart 
from his natural disposition to compromise, he wanted a clear 
field for a warfare on what he believed to be a far more living 
issue. Once, indeed, the Bill was very nearly dropped. To- 
wards the end of a very crowded session the Prime Minister 
proposed to the cabinet, that it should be jettisoned, and Mr. 
George, with the majority of members, appeared to be willing to 
bow to his chief's judgment. When the meeting had dis- 
persed, however, Mr. McKenna, who was a member for a 
Welsh constituency as well as minister in charge of the Bill, 
remained behind, with the evident intention of protesting. This 
action was not lost on Mr. George, who also returned, and, 
finding Mr. Asquith and Mr. McKenna engaged in serious 
discussion, lodged his own protest against abandonment. The 
double pressure sufficed, and Mr. Asquith returned to his table 
to work out a new time-table. 

But it was not on this cookery of thrice-boiled cabbage that 
Mr. George's heart was set. He was anxious to get forward 
with the land scheme. At Walthamstow after telling the 
audience how grateful it should be for the Insurance Act, he 
went on : — 

"Oh, there is a great task in front of us. ... A bigger task 
than democracy has ever yet undertaken in this land. You 



154 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

have got to free the land — the land that is to this day shackled 
with the chains of feudalism. We have got to free the people 
from the anxieties, the worries, the terrors — the terrors that 
they ought never to be called upon to face — terrors that their 
children may be crying for bread in this land of plenty. We 
have got to free the land from that. It is our shame. It is a 
disgrace to this, the richest land under the sun, that they should 
want; that is a contingency which no honest, thrifty man in 
this land should have to face. The Insurance Act is a begin- 
ning, and, with God's help, it is but a beginning." 

In a message to the Liberal candidate for a Cheshire seat, 
he declared that the government "looked forward to further 
progress along the path of reform in the direction of freeing 
the land system of this country from the bondage of monopoly 
and privilege." But in fact the government showed no such 
inclination. The situation, indeed, strongly resembled that of 
1903. Like Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Lloyd George had an idea 
which he was anxious to force on the country — an idea which 
he thought practically sound and electorally profitable. Like 
Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asquith could not help thinking that, how- 
ever admirable the idea in itself, its right place was a depart- 
mental pigeon-hole. Had things taken an ordinary course, 
this incompatibility would probably have developed, and the 
parallel might have been completed by Mr. George's resignation 
and a Liberal split. But the whole position was altered by 
what was known as the Marconi case. During many months 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and two of his intimate 
friends, were in the position of men whose conduct is under 
inquiry. Resignation during this period would have been 
political suicide. Nor was the position much more favourable 
afterwards, for though the personal honour of Mr. George 
was vindicated confidence in his judgment had been some- 
what shaken, and his influence in the party temporarily dimin- 
ished. It is thus quite possible that the whole current of his 
public life was deflected by a small private investment. 

During the second half of 191 2 there had been much mys- 
terious reference in the Press to alleged ministerial gambling in 



THE MARCONI CASE 155 

the shares of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, and 
on October 1 1 when Mr. Herbert Samuel, then Postmaster 
General, proposed to refer the agreement with that Company 
to a select committee, an attack on ministers was made by 
Mr. George Lansbury, the Socialist Member for Bow and 
Bromley. "I make no charges," he said, "against any individ- 
ual, but I say that there has been disgraceful, scandalous gamb- 
ling in these shares, caused by the fact that some people had 
previous knowledge of what the government was going to 
do." 

Mr. Samuel indignantly declared that neither he nor his 
colleagues had ever held a shilling in the shares of the company. 
Mr. George, observing that he came to the House because he 
had heard what was said outside, demanded that this charge 
should be formulated. "The reason," he said, "why the gov- 
ernment wanted a frank discussion before going to committee 
was that we wanted to bring here these rumours, these sinister 
rumours that have been passed from one foul lip to another 
behind the backs of the House." Sir Rufus Isaacs, the Attor- 
ney General, added an emphatic denial, and there for the 
moment the matter ended. 

But in February, 191 3, the indiscretion of a French paper 
having a London office gave Ministers the opportunity of re- 
sorting to the law. Le Matin, of Paris, had published a 
paragraph which may be translated as follows : — 

"A very gross scandal occupies the English Press. Some 
time ago the English government signed a contract with the 
Marconi Company by which the Company bound- itself for a 
large consideration — a too large consideration, I am told — to 
connect by wireless all the British possessions with the 
metropolis. 

"M. Leo Maxse, the eminent editor of the National Re- 
view, protested sharply against the way in which this agree- 
ment had been concluded. He let it be understood that Mr. 
Herbert Samuel, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, who had 
had the idea of entering into negotiations with the company, 
had come to an agreement with Sir Rufus Isaacs, Attorney 
General, also a member of the government, and brother to Mr. 



156 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Godfrey Isaacs, director of the Marconi Company. All three 
are represented to have brought (auraient achete) shares in the 
Company at the average price of 50 francs, which was their 
quoted price before the opening of negotiations with the Gov- 
ernment, and to have sold them (auraient revendu at a profit 
of anything up to 200 francs per share when progress of nego- 
tiations enabled conclusion of the contract to be foreseen." 

The two ministers named brought an action for libel against 
the French newspaper. No defence was attempted, and full 
apolog>' was offered for the indiscretion of the correspondent; 
but naturally the matter could not be slurred over. Lengthy 
statements were made both by Mr. Samuel and by Sir Rufus 
Isaacs, the latter of which alone has relevance to this narrative. 
In regard to the negotiations for a contract, he said : — 

"I was never consulted. ... I never saw any person with 
reference to the contract until, a few days before March 8th 
1912,^ at a family function my brother^ told me he expected 
or hoped in the next few days to get a contract with the Gov- 
ernment. ... I never brought a share" in the Marconi Com- 
pany either before or after or at any time. I have never held a 
share I have never had an interest in a share either directly or 
indirectly, I have never had an interest in any option or any 
syndicate. I do not know of any other form I could suggest of 
an interest in shares, but whatever it was I had it not." 

But Sir Rufus went on to explain that on April 17th ^ he 
had bought from another brother, Mr. Harry Isaacs, a ship 
and fruit broker in the City of London, ten thousand shares in 
the American Marconi Company. His counsel, Sir Edward 
Carson, then asked, "Did you sell 1,000 to Mr. Lloyd George 
and 1,000 to the Master of Elibank?" * Sir Rufus replied : — 

^ The Marconi Company's tender was accepted by the government on 
March 7th. 

*Mr. Godfrey Isaacs. 

* The formal contract between the government and the Marconi Com- 
pany was entered into on July 19th and came before Parliament on 
August 7th. 

*The Chief Liberal Whip at the time of the translation. 



THE MARCONI CASE 157 

"Yes. I told them. I was living on very intimate terms 
with them ; we are great personal friends, and I told them what 
I had done. I told them what I knew about the American 
Marconi Company, and that I should not have gone into it 
unless I was satisfied that it had nothing whatever to do with 
the Marconi Company, or with any contract that had been 
made or might be made with the British government. I told 
them I thought it was a very good investment, and they took 
1 ,000 shares from me at the same price as I had paid for them. 
I do not know that they had ever heard of the American Com- 
pany. I am quite sure they would never have gone into it except 
for what I told them. I sold 3,750. The sale afforded a profit. 
Having now 6,430 left I should have a loss of from £1,100 to 
£1,200 if I sold at the present moment. That applies to the 
whole 10,000. That is the net result of all transactions I 
have ever had in Marconi or any other wireless enterprise." 

Sir Edward Carson then asked what was the position of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Murray.^ "They 
stand," said Sir Rufus, "in about the same position — they have 
lost a few hundreds each." 

Mr. Lloyd George's account of the affair was given later 
before a select committee appointed by the House of Com- 
mons. As was almost inevitable, members of the Committee 
took up strongly contrasted attitudes based on party differences. 
There was a section which aimed at impartiality. There was a 
section, notably represented by Lord Robert Cecil, which was 
clearly concerned to make the most of the facts. There was 
another section equally disposed to minimise the facts and to 
aid the part of that whitewashing committee which Camille 
Desmoulins, early in the French Revolution, compared to a piece 
of blotting paper : — 

"Vous enlevez la tache, et la tache vous reste." 

In the presence of these inquisitors Mr. George bore him- 
self gallantly enough, but his careworn features showed abun- 
dant signs that the ordeal was not light, and it was noticed for 
the first time that his hair had gone distinctly grey and that 
he was forced to use pince-nez. 

*The Master of Elibank had received a Peerage on retirement. 



158 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

He added, as to the transaction itself, little to the statement 
of the Attorney General. Of the thousand shares, he sold, on 
the advice of his stock-broker, five hundred on April 20th and 
on May 3rd Sir Rufus sold another block of 314 for him. 
These transactions left a profit of about £750 and the unsold 
shares, but on May 22nd he and the Master of Elibank had 
bought between them another 3,000, also in the American Mar- 
coni Company. These they had retained. 

The most generally interesting part of the Chancellor's state- 
ment was that in which he protested, with considerable emo- 
tion, against suggestions for wider than the actual allegations. 
People were talking about his being a very wealthy man, about 
his owning mansions in Surrey and Wales and villas in the 
South of France, and there were hints in ntwspaper articles 
that he could not possibly have saved the money out of his 
five thousand a year. With indignation in his voice and gesture 
the minister proceeded : — 

*T have devoted so much of my time to politics that, although 
I have a profession, supposed to be lucrative, I never made the 
most of it; I only practised it just to make a living. When a 
man becomes a minister he is given a substantial salary, and 
it was very substantial to me. having regard to the life I had 
led up to that time as a humble solicitor. . . . But remember 
this. Every minister knows his position is provisional and 
his glories transitory, and he has to take that into account, and 
must think of the time when others, more worthy than himself, 
will fill the same position. . . . There are those to be consid- 
-ered whom he will leave behind. . . . With regard to that I, 
therefore, had to consider — what every minister has to con- 
sider in my position — not to live quite up to my income, but to 
set something aside ; and I have done it. I have invested. . . . 
My total investments bring me about four hundred a year. 
That is my great fortune. That is all I could leave if I went 
down. 

"With regard to mansions, I have only one house which I 
can call my own. It became clear, because of recent occur- 
rences, that the 'great mansion' down at Walton Heath was not 
mine at all. They blew up somebody else's property before I 
even had the lease of it. I am sorry to say that some of the 



THE MARCONI CASE 159 

Press have been doing their very best to create a wrong im- 
pression. I have seen photographs taken at such an angle as 
to make it look a sort of royal palace. The house, including the 
land, is worth only £2000. I have one house in Wales. Can- 
not a man fifty years of age have one house to call his own? 
It is rather hard. I built a house three or four years ago, I 
was so busy with the Budget that I could not even spend my 
salary, and built it more or less from my salary. That is my 
mansion. That is all I have got in the world." 

For the rest Mr. Lloyd George gave an interesting glimpse 
of his relations with the other ministers at the time of the 
investment. The Master of Elibank had lived under the roof 
of II Downing Street "for weeks, if not months." "As for 
Sir Rufus Isaacs," he said, "we had meals together, and I think 
golf and transactions of that kind." That was the real reason 
the Master of Elibank was brought in. "We were not picking 
ministers here and there, but simply because we happened to 
be in the same rooms and were constantly together." 

In June, 1913, the committee published its finding. The 
majority report dealt not at all in censure, and little in criti- 
cism. The minority report, which bore the impress of party 
feeling, made the following points : — 

(i) The purchases of April 17th were made when the 
shares could not have been bought in the ordinary way on the 
Stock Exchange, and at a lower price than ordinary members 
of the public could have bought them. Sir Rufus Isaacs had 
obtained these advantages because he took these shares from 
Mr. Harry Isaacs, who had had them on still more advantage- 
ous terms from Mr. Godfrey Isaacs. 

(2) The Marconi Company of America was indirectly but 
materially interested in the conclusion of the agreement between 
the English Marconi Company and the British government. 

(3) The transactions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
were in the main rather in the nature of speculation than of 
Investment. 

(4) The persistence of rumours had been largely due to the 
reticence of ministers. 



160 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

The Rejx>rt signed by the chainnati ' also declared that there 
was a vital coiiiieetion between the British and the American 
Company. All members of the committee were agreed that: — 

"No Minister, official, or Member of Parliament has been 
influenced in the discharge ot his public duties by reason of 
any interest he might have had in any of the Ahu-coni or other 
undertakings connected with wireless telegraphy, or utilised 
information given to" hint from"i0fficial sources for the purpose 
of investment or speculation in any such undertakings." 

Thus the honour of ministers was cleared by unanimous 
finding, and the House of Commons, in the subsequent debate, 
showed no disposition to take another view. Both the Attor- 
ney General and the Chancellor of the Exchequer made state- 
ments which deeply i^(.A«d the House. That of Mr. Lloyd 
George was especially c^ia?ged with deep emotion. "I have 
been," he said, "a member of the House for twenty-three years. 
I have spent most of my active life in the service of the House, 
and I should be deeply grieved indeed if the House of Commons 
thought I . . . had been lacking in frankness and openness in 
dealing with it." An interruption struck a spark from him. 
"These charges," he cried, "have been exploded, but the deadly 
after-damp remains." and for a moment he spoke bitterly of 
the inquisition to which he had been submitted : — 

*T wonder how any member would care to go through the 
ordeal which the Attorney General and myself have gone 
through during the last few months. . . . Rut it was not these 
things which gave me most pain — it was the anxiety, both in- 
side and outside this House, of those who have been comrades 
of mine in great struggles. Nothing has pierced me more 
deeply than the apprehension lest some thoughtlessness should 
have put in jeopardy causes which I have been brought up to 
believe in as a religious faith. I am conscious of having done 
nothing to bring a slur upcm the honour of ministers of the 
Crown. Perhaps I acted thoughtlessly, perhaps I acted care- 
lessly, perhaps I acted mistakenly, but I acted innocentlyj I 
acted openly, I acted honestly." 
^ Sir Albert Spicer, a Liberal M.P. 



THE MARCONI CASE 101 

This view was taken by nearly three hundred and fifty mem- 
Ders of the House, who voted against the resolution of Mr. 
(afterwards Viscount) Cave expressing regret that the min- 
isters had engaged in these transactions, and had not shown 
more frankness in their communications with the House. Mr. 
Balfour declared that "no flutter should be indulged in by 
your Chancellor of the Exchequer." Mr. Bonar Law consid- 
ered ministers had been "lacking in moral courage." No re- 
sponsible person was found to go further, and the quietness 
with which the public received the subsequent appointment of 
Sir Rufus Isaacs as Lord Chief Justice seemed to indicate that 
the country shared the view of the majority of the House of 
Commons. 

Mr. George himself, once the shadow had passed, quickly 
recovered his elasticity of spirits and indeed displayed a defiant 
spirit contrasting strongly with his late humility. On July 
31st he declared his belief that a deliberate conspiracy was on 
foot to "overthrow democratic government." A certain peer, 
it seemed, had promised when he went out of office to roast an 
ox in his park. "Let him not get too near the fire," said Mr. 
George, "or there may be an unhappy and painful mistake over 
the victim." "I feel," he declared, in one of his characteristic 
figures, "like a petrel that has been breasting an angry sea and 
has been riding in a fierce tempest and has just come to rest, a 
foot on the friendly rocks of his native shore; but I am sailing 
back immediately into the hurricane, for it is my element." 
About this time, indeed, he revelled in images taken from Buf- 
fon on the Bible. The Insurance Act, stoned by the Conserva- 
tives, was "doing the work of the Man of Nazareth." ^ He 
had been fighting with beasts at Ephesus ^ but before they had 
finished they would be sorry they had begun the attack. Like 
Samson he had slaughtered the hideous monster which had 
sought his life, and "out of the carcase would come something 
that would sweeten the life of millions." He was like Sebas- 
tian, who had his hands tied behind his back, while arrows were 
shot into him from all sides. ^ 

* Speech at Ashficld-in-Sutton, Notts. 

' Speech at Carnarvon. 

•Luncheon of congratulation at the National Liberal Club. 



162 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

But clearly, though his hands might be free — "free to shield, 
free to smite, not for myself, but for the cause I believe in, 
which I have devoted my life to, and which I am going on 
with." 

Mr. George's position was much less simple than if there had 
been no such thing as this "shabbiest chapter in the history of 
any party," as he described the attack which had compelled him 
and his friends "to sit silent, while calumny from every quarter 
was being hurled at our heads." He could hardly leave the 
cabinet without being misunderstood, and the Prime Minister, 
who had defended him with equal skill and staunchness, was 
obviously not ready to embark on an attempt to add revolu- 
tionary land legislation to his already great and accumulating 
difficulties over Ireland. 

Thus the land campaign when launched really resembled 
what it has been called — a smashed egg — and the oratory gave 
the impression — lurid but confused — of the barn door against 
which it had been shattered. The speech at Bedford in the 
autumn of 191 3, proved to be little more than an attack on 
the game laws. Mr. George, with his early impressions still 
vivid, could speak vehemently enough on this subject, but 
after all it was only a fraction of the whole question, and the 
immediate result was simply to provoke a controversy, welcome 
to ornithologists, but not generally important, on the habits 
of the pheasant : 

"There is no country In Europe where so much cultivable 
land is given up entirely to sport. No country in the world 
where cultivable and even highly cultivated land is so over-run 
and so continuously damaged by game, . . . In 185 1 you had 
in this country 9000 game-keepers. In 191 1 there were 23,000. 
During that period the number of labourers had gone down by 
600,000. Take a copy of The Field to-day and you will see 
advertisements about shooting rights over estates where last 
year 5000 pheasants were caught. . . . We have complaints 
from farmers in every part of the country that their crops have 
been damaged by the game. Here is one farmer who was sow- 
ing his crop — it was a field of mangolds. The man assured 



THE MARCONI CASE 163 

me there was not one mangold out of a dozen which was not 
pecked and destroyed by pheasants. Where you should have 
got 35 tons, you could not have had more than lo tons. It was 
not worth the expense and labour of carting." 

Mr. Lloyd George spoke also of rural housing, of security 
of tenure for the farmer, of half-holidays and better wages for 
the labourer ; but how, when and by what means these desirable 
things were to be achieved was left a matter of doubt. Mention 
of them was, indeed, almost as incidental as the reference to 
Mr. Leo Maxse as "the cat's meat man of the Tory Party." 
On game Mr. George seemed to have determined to concen- 
trate, and even so for a country-bred man his talk of "caught" 
pheasants and their addition to the mangold wurzel was not a 
little urban in its innocence. Conservative insistence on the 
latter point, however, rather helped him with the proletarians 
of the towns. The fuss made about the habits of the pheasant, 
and its positive diction of mangold wurzel, confirmed popular 
suspicion concerning the pampered nature of these birds, and 
diverting attention from the real lack of meat and marrow in 
the speech. 

A little later ^ Mr. George pursued the theme : — 

"You have no notion in the towns of the pagan thraldom 
that stifles liberty in our villages. The squire is god; the par- 
son, the agent, the game-keepers — these are his priests; the 
pheasants, the hares — these are the sacred birds and beasts of 
the tabernacle. The Game Laws are the Ark of the Covenant, 
and the business of the labourer is to fill with the fat of the 
land the flesh-pots of the temple, whilst he boWs down and 
worships its graven images. Ah ! you must not have too much 
independence in that atmosphere ; there must be no state credit 
to build houses; the houses must be landlords' houses. 

State credit for rural housing carried things a little further. 
But the land policy as a whole remained cloudy, and the land 
campaign, after the battle of the Budget, was but decanted cham- 
pagne. When the Land Committee, appointed by Mr. George 
as the Tariff Commission had been by Mr. Chamberlain, pre- 

* At Halloway. 



164 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

sented a two volume report intended to be a new evangel, the 
reception was irreverent. Mr. George was not a little dis- 
appointed. But he could hardly expect in the state of public 
agitation concerning Ireland, that people should get vastly 
excited over something which, if bad, was no worse than the 
year before. Moreover, Mr. George miscalculated the extent 
of English animosity against the landed classes; Welshman by 
birth and townsman by habit he had not grasped the rough and 
grumbling geniality of rural England. So he continued to 
make himself believe somehow that the people were longing to 
get at the oppressor, and were impatient with the gathering 
Ulster trouble as a mere irrelevancy. 

Mr. George's real feelings concerning Ireland can hardly be 
gathered from his meagre references to the subject. That he 
had a certain sympathy with Ulster is certain. He might re- 
prove, but he could understand the Presbyterian ministers 
who were talking about a second William the Deliverer, and 
with his little reverence for constitutional nicety he might easily 
be less scandalised than many over the preparations for armed 
resistance. Whatever the case, he dealt little in public censure 
of Ulster, while in private his voice was thrown on the side 
of inaction. At one period all but three members of the cab- 
inet, it is believed, were in favour of decisive action against 
Sir Edward Carson. Mr. George was one of the dissentients, 
and the step was delayed. Afterwards Mr. Redmond inter- 
vened, holding that Irishmen should settle their disputes among 
themselves; the position of the minority was accordingly 
strengthened; and matters were allowed to drift. 

Part of Mr. George's want of interest was probably due to 
the conviction, based upon knowledge of Mr. Redmond's 
placable and generous nature, that sooner or later a compro- 
mise would be effected. But to him, itching to get on with a 
sensational novelty, the Irish question was a wearisome inter- 
lude and Sir Edward Carson a tiresome performer overdoing 
his turn. It was, indeed, a very vital interest that he should 
get well started on a big enterprise, for, from the Marconi de- 
bate to the outbreak of the Great War Mr. Lloyd George oc- 
cupied a position not only of comparative obscurity but of 



THE MARCONI CASE 165 

great discomfort. He could not but feel that every month 
during which the Ulster leader occupied the limelight was 
exhausting the capacity of the British people to be thrilled by 
milder excitement. He could not but feel that, if in one sense 
still the most powerful minister in the cabinet, he was in an- 
other rather the prisoner than the colleague of Mr. Asquith, 
To put a proud man under a vital obligation is a great impru- 
dence. Mr. Asquith, in standing strongly by Mr. Lloyd George 
and Sir Rufus Isaacs throughout the Marconi affair, had been 
unfortunate enough to wound a very sensitive pride. Sir 
Rufus, with the placable temper of his race, no doubt thought 
no more about the matter, so soon as he had reached the dig- 
nified security of the King's Bench. Mr. George, embarrassed 
and hampered, must have resented equally the sense of obliga- 
tion and the equally inevitable sense of lessened freedom and 
importance. The momentary relapse to his pre-Agadir mode 
of thought may have been due, as much as anything, to the 
wish to assert an independence which he was in fact far from 
feeling. Thus, perhaps, it was that he showed so little pro- 
vision, and was so deeply absorbed in his Doomsday Book when 
something very like the crack of Doom was approaching. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR 

■nXDR whatever reason the opening of the year of the Great 
X/ War found Mr. George nearer the Radical left wing 
than at any time since 1910. It was only there that he could 
hope for passionate support of his land scheme. It was only 
there that he had found full sympathy during the Marconi 
trouble. A sense of personal resentment against the Union- 
ists who had been his chief enemies in that transaction had 
obliterated the pleasanter memories of the Constitutional Con- 
ference, and more than restored the temper of the Budget 
days. He had become estranged from Mr. Churchill whose 
interests, since taking the Admiralty, had become exclusively 
aquatic, and there was no other member of the cabinet to 
take Mr. Churchill's place. With only one set in the House 
of Commons could he be unquestioned hero, and to that sec- 
tion he began increasingly to address himself. 

In introducing the Budget of 19 13 he remarked on the 
"very startling" figure of the total, £195,000,000 and went 
on to attribute a great part of it to "panics and nightmares." 
Fifty years previously, he said, the country had suffered from 
similar delusions; Napoleon III was then the bugbear; there 
was fear of invasion; enormous sums were spent on useless 
fortifications; there were the same calculations and compari- 
sons between fleets, the same stories of secret preparations; 
and now we knew that the French Emperor not only had no 
hostile designs, but was exceedingly anxious to be friendly. 

In thus belittling the German menace, Mr. George, it must 
he presumed, was ignorant of some things of which a minister 
in his high position should have been informed. Lord Haldane 
had visited Berlin early in 191 2, as the result of a suggestion 
thrown out by the Kaiser, had spoken with "very big men," 

166 



THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR 167 

and had come away, as he afterwards acknowledged/ "feeling 
uneasy." He had been forced to realise that, far from Ger- 
many being willing to call a halt in her navy preparations, she 
was in fact providing not only for a great advance in building 
but for an increase in personnel and striking force ; the German 
fleet was henceforth to be on almost completely a permanent 
war footing. The civilian Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, 
might be honestly pacific; the Kaiser might still be loth for 
war ; but quite obviously the militarists, both on sea and land, 
were planning war, and would get it if possible. The only 
question was whether they would win. 

Lord Haldane still inclined to believe in the victory of the 
peace party. For that reason, and in fear that the public com- 
munication of his "uneasiness" would precipitate the very 
catastrophe he wished to avoid, he kept silence, not only to 
the public, but to his colleagues, apart from those who must 
necessarily be informed. A certain advantage could not be 
denied to this course. But it had the disadvantage that the 
Radical left wing could not be effectively controlled when they 
vilified Big Navy ministers, insulted possible allies, and de- 
nounced the necessary naval expenditure. It was, therefore, 
doubly unfortunate that the minister who of all others had 
influence with this wing was not apparently taken into the 
confidence of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. 

The government's policy, after the unavailing oflFer by Mr. 
Churchill of a "naval holiday," was to go on with the neces- 
sary building. But in the meantime it spoke fair, and strove 
to prove, by its attitude during the later stages of the Balkan 
War, that Great Britain was very far from hostile to the Cen- 
tral Empires. The Austrian view of the peace-making was 
definitely favoured ; and the Serbs were denied their "window 
on the sea" in order that a sham Albanian State should be 
erected under a German princeling. Meanwhile minister after 
minister pronounced war "unthinkable" — even at the very 
time when Italy was being unsuccessfully entreated to join in 
an attack on her neighbours. Mr. Harcourt could "conceive 
no circumstances in which continental operations would not 

* To a representative of the Chicago Daily News in 191 5, 



168 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

be a crime." Mr. Acland said we "must be known as the 
friends of all." Lord Loreburn wrote that "time would show 
that the Germans had no aggressive intentions," and that 
"then foolish people will cease to talk of a war between us 
which will never take place." At the beginning of December, 
1913, Lord Haldane, surely carrying concealment of his "un- 
easiness" too far, announced that "our relations with Germany 
were twice as good as they were two years ago." Still, the 
government was adamant on the main point. When the 
National Liberal Federation ^ declared "great anxiety" over 
the growth in armaments, Mr. Asquith gave scant encour- 
agement. It was one thing to offer soft words. It was an- 
other to scrap Dreadnoughts. 

But Mr. George, apparently in the dark as to the facts, 
and not helped on this occasion by his usually keen perception, 
threw the whole weight of his influence into the other camp. 
In the cabinet Mr. Churchill found in his old associate his 
chief opponent. To the country Mr. George appealed, through 
an interview in the Daily Chronicle on New Year's Day, 19 14, 
against the "organised insanity" of armaments. Our relations 
with Germany, he argued, were "infinitely" more friendly than 
they had been for years, and even if Germany had had the 
idea of challenging our sea supremacy the "exigencies of the 
military situation (i.e., the greater man-power of France and 
Russia) must necessarily put it out of her head. Therefore 
it was quite enough to maintain our existing naval superiority 
without trying feverishly to increase it. "Unless," he con- 
cluded, "Liberalism seized the opportunity it would be false 
to its noblest traditions, and those who had the conscience of 
Liberalism in their charge would be written down for all time 
as having grossly betrayed their trust." 

This of course was scarcely more mischievous, and vastly 
less silly, than Sir John Simon's declaration that "the fellow 
countrymen of Shakespeare and Milton could not look askance 
on the fellow countrymen of Goethe and Schiller" and that 
"those who had the tradition of Wyckliffe and Wesley had no 
ground of quarrel with the descendants of Luther." But Sir 

*At Leeds, November, 1913. 



THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR 169 

John Simon was then (roughly speaking) nobody in particu- 
lar. Mr. George, for all his temporary eclipse, was a man of 
first-rate position, as well as first-rate ability, and moreover 
(as the event proved) a robust patriot. It is inconceivable 
that, duly informed, he could have spoken in this vein at this 
time, and that he was not informed must be imputed as a con- 
siderable indiscretion. According to a credible witness,^ Mr. 
Lloyd George was not without an inward monitor in this mat- 
ter. As early as 1908, during a holiday in Germany, he had 
spoken of the possibility of a war between Great Britain and 
Germany, and, in introducing the parallels of Rome and Car- 
thage, had developed "views of the future which in other days 
would have passed as prophetic." "There is," he had said, 
"the same commercial rivalry, the same maritime jealousy, the 
same eternal quarrel between the soldier and the merchant, the 
warrior and the shop-keeper, the civilisation which has come 
and that which is still striving to come. ... I wonder if we 
are not as ill prepared as was Carthage. I wonder if we are 
not equally distracted by factions." 

There was nothing very original in these reflections; much 
the same thoughts had passed through some hundreds of thou- 
sands of cultivated brains during the early years of the cen- 
tury. But they do suggest an openness of mind most distinct 
from the dogmatism of the ordinary Pacificism of those days. 
In an active politician, however, such promptings of insight 
are apt to be forgotten in the midst of the allurements of 
opportunity, and in no case can they exercise the same salu- 
tary effect as knowledge of the brutal facts. 

Such knowledge should have been Mr. George's in the 
early days of 19 14. Things being as they were, it is not 
surprising that he was little more alive to the actual dangers 
of the national situation than were the leaders of the Unionist 
party, whose thoughts were exclusively occupied by Irish af- 
fairs. Even the warning crime of Sarajevo produced no abate- 
ment in the fury of faction which had been stirred by the 
Larne gun-running and the Curragh incident. On July 21 a 
conference of political leaders, including Mr. George, met at 

*Mr. Harold Spender. 



170 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Buckingham Palace in a desperate eleventh-hour attempt to 
reach a settlement on Ireland. On the 24th it broke up with- 
out agreement of any kind, and if proof were wanting of the 
obtuse imbecility in high places it would be found in the fact 
that the news caused much more immediate sensation than that 
of the despatch by Austria, on July 23, of an ultimatum to 
Serbia which could only be read as a determination to end the 
independent existence of that nation. Five days later Austria 
declared war, and it became almost certain that Russia would 
fight Austria rather than allow the small Slav nation to be 
crushed. 

During that terrible last week of July, Mr. Lloyd George 
remained convinced that no reason had arisen to justify war 
by Great Britain. Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith had 
both come to the conclusion, by Thursday, July 30, that the 
only possible means of staying Germany's hand against Rus- 
sia, and therefore of preventing the embroilment of France, 
was to inform the German ambassador that Great Britain 
would certainly act up to the spirit of her understanding. Sir 
Edward Grey had in fact given the ambassador the clearest 
warning which could in the circumstances be conveyed. But 
when the time came for a positive decision between war and 
delay (or neutrality) these ministers were unable to carry 
with them a majority of the cabinet. Lord Haldane, Lord 
Crewe, Mr. Churchill, and Mr. McKenna were certainly in 
the war camp, which is said also to have included Mr. Runci- 
man.^ Mr. George, as he has himself stated, was on the side 
certainly of delay, and perhaps of neutrality. 

"The Saturday after war had actually been declared on the 
Continent (i.e., August i)," said Mr. Lloyd George in a subse- 
quent interview,^ "a poll of the electors of Great Britain would 
have shown 95 per cent against embroiling this country in 
hostilities. Powerful city financiers, whom it was my duty to 
interview this Saturday, ended the conference with an earnest 
hope that Great Britain would keep out of it." 

^"Mr. Lloyd George and the War," Walter Roche. 
'PubHshed in "Pearson's Magazine," Sept., IQIS- 



THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR 171 

This was, of course, the exact fact. Certain SociaHst 
critics afterwards adopted the astonishing view that the war 
was a "capitalistic undertaking." In fact every large interest 
was as hostile to the war as it had been to Mr. Lloyd George's 
Budget. Mr. Lloyd George on this occasion took the capitalist 
point of view. Even as late as August 3, when certain Liberal 
newspapers printed a communication from the German Em- 
bassy stating that in the event of British neutrality Germany 
would undertake no naval operations against the French coast, 
he was for non-intervention. To quote further the interview 
to which allusion has been made, he said : — 

"After the guarantee given that the German fleet would not 
attack the coast of France or annex any French territory I 
would not have been a party to a declaration of war, had Bel- 
gium not been invaded; and I think I can say the same for 
most, if not all, my colleagues." 

The "guarantee" was, of course, no guarantee at all; the 
value of all German guarantees of the kind was to be signally 
illustrated during the next few years. Mr. George's consis- 
tency can only be maintained at some expense to his percep- 
tion. But in truth there is no need to scrutinise too jealously 
the motives which converted him suddenly from the advocate 
of peace to the most determined war minister in the cabinet. 
They could be explained in two sentences. At this time he 
was in such matters something of a child, and it needed the 
ritual baseness of the invasion of Belgium to open his eyes to 
the true inwardness of the German enterprise. He was also 
a democrat who had so far understood the people only in one 
of its moods; forty-eight hours' contact with the streets of 
London were to show him another, and had convinced him that 
"powerful city financiers" do not adequately represent the 
British race when "honour's at the stake." This is not to say, 
crudely, that he was against war until he thought war was 
popular. Such a way of stating the case would be entirely 
unjust. But it would be neither unjust nor untrue to say that 
Mr. Lloyd George has that type of character which, for good 



172 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

or ill, catches enthusiasms as men catch fevers. He becomes 
infected by the mood of the people at the very moment when 
he thinks he is imbuing the people with his own. 

Again, it was one of his peculiarities that he could without 
effort pass from one extreme of conviction to the other, with- 
out losing energy or individuality. His case compares 
strangely with that of other members of the cabinet who were 
reluctantly swept with him at the last moment into a course 
which they had long opposed. While Lord Morley and Mr. 
John Burns resigned, Mr. Harcourt and Sir John Simon re- 
mained. But, unlike Mr. George, they could not get rid of 
their past. War was still hateful to them, and they were 
always hoping, first for war on a limited scale, and secondly 
for some solution which was not warlike. Mr. George never 
looked back, and when he looked forward it was to nothing 
less than victory, victory complete and final, victory without 
qualification or short-weight. He had no antipathy for Ger- 
many ; even in the darkest days of the war he retained an odd 
admiration, even a sort of inverted sympathy for the enemy. 
He might be compared with those Irish Catholics, who, after 
the Boyne, replied to a Protestant taunt, "Change kings, and 
let us fight you over again." Many a time he must have in- 
dulged an artist's fancy of what he could have done, if to the 
German material resources he could add something the Ger- 
mans never had, the power he himself possessed in such su- 
preme measure of generating spiritual energy. A united com- 
mand, generals grown grey in the great school of war, an 
army such as the world had never seen, and himself to main- 
tain the "home front," free from apprehension as to the 
trenches — he must often have wistfully contrasted such a 
vision with the actualities of his own position. 

But, though quite without the passion of some men against 
the German ideals and the German philosophy — robbed of its 
incidental brutalities it was largely his own, so far as he had 
one, — he was no less fixed in his purpose than contemporary 
French statesmen, sustained as they were by poignant memo- 
ries and sombre fears. Living during the war, as always, 
mainly in the present, with not too much thought of the future 



THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR 173 

and none whatever of the past, he was able to rise at a single 
stride from the status of a party manager to that of a great 
national statesman, the personification of the warlike resolves 
of an imperial people. 



CHAPTER XIII 

AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS 

WHAT a baby is to a flighty but sound-hearted woman 
the Great War was to Mr. Lloyd George. It gave him 
something concrete and despotic to absorb an energy which 
had so far exceeded both his vision and his judgment. 

The main elements in his character were in no way 
changed ; they were to reassert themselves the moment pres- 
sure relaxed, and were indeed ever ready to emerge, even in 
the midst of the war, when appeal was made to that spirit of 
opportunism, those instincts of the smart political window- 
dresser and counter-hand, which are so strangely allied with 
a temper often approaching the heroic. The war made Mr. 
George great because it gave him much scope for action, and 
very little occasion for thought. There was in those early days 
no subtlety about the issue; it was a great black-and-white 
platitude, easily grasped by one who is after all intellectually 
simple. The man who asked "What shall I do to be saved?" 
was not told that he must embark on a campaign for the ma- 
terial betterment of the masses. He was merely told to sell all 
that he had and give to the poor. Equally direct and simple 
was the message at last heard by the Welsh statesman above 
the babble of his "powerful City financiers," and it is to his 
credit that he did not go away sorrowful, because of his politi- 
cal possessions and prepossessions, but rather found a certain 
zest in scattering his capital. 

For the first time, probably, in his life he now concentrated 
on one thing, and it was a thing big enough, definite enough, 
dramatic enough to make him forget, for some months at 
least, not only his personal affairs, but all the pettier considera- 
tions which had so engrossed the smaller Lloyd George, the 
electioneer and party manager, who is mainly visible before 

174 



AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS 175 

August, 1914. In his own words, he lost interest for the time 
both in vested interest and in vested prejudice. A sudden 
growth in the whole man was the consequence. It is only 
occasionally that we find, in the oratory of this period, that 
touch of the tawdry and the trivial which seldom failed to 
mar, to a fastidious taste, the effect of his social reform 
speeches. There is less cleverness and more wisdom ; there 
are frequent flashes of true inspiration; the old ingenuity is 
dignified by genuine nobility of sentiment, as well as by true 
elevation of phraseology. In the field of action we discern the 
effects of the same impulse. The dexterity of the negotiator 
remains; the small attorney-like finesse has for the time 
vanished. 

A great many emergency measures were forced on the 
Treasury by the unparallelled situation created by the outbreak 
of war, and by common acknowledgment Mr. George acted 
with vigour and judgment. It matters little whether the vari- 
ous devices for preventing a collapse of credit — the moratorium 
and so forth — were his own, or Lord Reading's, or some per- 
manent official's. A statesman is to be judged by his wisdom 
in choosing, his courage or judgment in applying, and not by 
his ingenuity in inventing expedients ; there are a hundred men 
who can suggest a course for one who can make it effective. 
Mr. George showed at once prompt courage and a firm sense 
of the limits of the practicable, and the City, which had hitherto 
detested his name, at once accorded him its confidence. In the 
country the very luridness of his past contributed to the favour 
shown him by former adversaries; Saul among the prophets 
gained by the memory of his former vexings of the faithful. 

Of his old colleagues three only commanded equal esteem. 
Mr. Asquith for the moment spoke, and seemed to act, as 
befitted the leader of a great nation, in the crisis of its fate. 
The spell of Sir Edward Grey's influence still held. Mr. 
Churchill, with his genius for getting near the middle of the 
picture, had the double credit of being ready with the navy 
and of appearing in the House of Commons with "great tears 
in his eyes." 

But almost immediately these respectable figures were 



176 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

dwarfed by a stately and enigmatic personality. Despite his 
services to the army, whatever they may have been, Lord 
Haldane had had to pay the price of his over-advertised admi- 
ration of all German things, and the readers of the popular 
press would not hear of his return to the \\'ar Office. Lord 
Kitchener was summoned to Whitehall, by a voice that 
would take no denial, and for some time Mr. George occupied 
a situation quite novel to him. He had a colleague with whom, 
in the nature of things, he was bound ultimately to come into 
conflict, and against this colleague no device so far familiar 
was available. Lord Kitchener was impervious to intimida- 
tion, cajolement, flattery, and even argument. Whether he 
took refuge in taciturnity, or in a flood of confused and con- 
fusing talk, he equally baffled. There was no appeal from him 
to the Prime Minister, still less to the people. For the Prime 
Minister at that time accepted Lord Kitchener's view on any- 
thing and everything, and the people would have made short 
work of any civilian who openly derided the embodied legend 
who held sway at the War Office. 

Mr. Asquith believed in leaving military matters to mili- 
tary men. Probably ready to think that they knew their own 
business, he was at least certain that he could not teach them it. 
Perhaps unfortunately for the country, certainly to his own 
undoing, he relied implicitly, in the words of a younger min- 
ister, on the "red tabs," or, in the more elegant idiom of Sir 
William Robertson, he was "always ready to give an impartial 
hearing to the views of the general staff." But it so hap- 
pened that there were two soldiers in the first War Cabinet. 
There was Lord Kitchener, secretive and absolutist. There 
was Mr. Winston Churchill, loquacious and irrepressible. If 
rank and experience were alone to count, Mr. Churchill was 
no doubt at some small disadvantage. But while the Field 
Marshal might invite confidence from his record, the martial 
tastes, hereditary instincts, and argumentative ability of Mr. 
Churchill, to say nothing of his supreme self-confidence, made 
him no contemptible influence in counsel, and there were times 
when Lord Kitchener himself was overborne by his energy 
and plausibility. 



AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS 177 

For the moment Mr. George felt some diffidence in claim- 
ing, or recognised the impossibility of obtaining, a share of 
the direction of operations, and devoted himself to the task, 
at this time perhaps more congenial as well as more useful, of 
rousing the country to a due sense of its duty and of the neces- 
sities of the time. 

His speech at the Queen's Hall on September 19th, per- 
haps the noblest he made during the war, showed how far he 
had pledged heart and brain to the task of victory. It was 
just after the great miracle of the Marne had given even scep- 
tics the sense that the immortals had spoken judgment, in 
their Court of First Instance, against Germany. Against that 
judgment, of course, there would be appeal after appeal, with 
ruinous piling up of costs, but it was felt vaguely but deeply 
that Germany had lost because God Himself had decided that 
she must not win. 

That was the only genuine meaning in the catch-phrase 
about time being "on the side of the Allies." If Germany 
could not succeed at first, with all the advantages her patient 
and industrious iniquity had given her, could she hope to pre- 
vail by any further efforts against the High V^eto on her enter- 
prise? A people in this mood was sensitive to the kind of 
appeal which Mr. George was of all public men best qualified 
to make. The invocation of sacred names, unpleasant when 
the matter in hand was some vote-catching measure of social 
reform, appeared fitting enough in this solemn crisis. A few 
years later we were a nation of seasoned and cynical war- 
riors. But when Mr. George first spoke the coarsening efifects 
of war, its filth and squalor, had not been felt, and' he did most 
authentically represent the spirit of the greater part of the 
nation when he said : — 

"It is a great opportunity, an opportunity which comes only 
once in many centuries to the children of men. For most gen- 
erations sacrifice comes in drab guise and weariness of spirit. 
It comes to you to-day, and it comes to-day to all of us, in the 
form of the glow and thrill of a great movement for liberty, 
that impels millions throughout Europe to the same noble end. 
We have been living in a sheltered valley for generations. We 



178 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

have been too comfortable and too indulgent, — many, perhaps, 
too selfish, — and the stern hand of fate has scourged us to an 
elevation where we can see the everlasting things that matter 
for a nation — the great peaks we had forgotten of Honour, 
Duty, Patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the towering 
pinnacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven. 
We shall descend into the valleys again, but as long as the men 
and women of this generation last they will carry in their 
hearts the image of those mighty peaks whose foundations are 
not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of 
a great war." 

There were of course in this speech some incidental errors 
of taste ("ramshackle empire," "road-hogs," "long legs in a 
retreat," and the like) but its protest against the brutality, the 
mechanistic atheism of Hohenzollern Germany — the culture 
that would "recreate man in the image of a Diesel machine, 
precise, accurate, powerful, with no room for the soul to 
operate" — was both noble and nobly phrased. 

It was not the less effective because it testified against the 
orator himself. Neither the British Imperialists nor the 
British Socialists had been free from just that worship of big- 
ness, that passion for uniformity, that quantitative conception 
of welfare and idolatry of the State ; and Mr. George, but for 
his happy knack of forgetting, might have been conscious of 
some ingratitude to those who had given him so many valuable 
hints in the art of Prussianisation. He was to relapse into 
tolerance and even enthusiasm for the things he now de- 
nounced, but that at the moment he sincerely felt what he said 
there can be no doubt. He had caught once more the mood of 
the crowd. All that was fat, or smug, or ignoble or sordid in 
England was then shamed or frightened into silence and pas- 
sivity; for some brief space of time the heroic temper, usually 
content to serve, took command ; and the speech thus inspired 
still deserves to be read as a memorial of the state of mind 
both of the orator and of the nation. 

Different, and necessarily so, was the tone in which Mr. 
George about the same time addressed a deputation to the 



AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS 179 

Treasury concerning the need for economy in municipal ex- 
penditure : — 

"We need all our resources, not merely of men, but of cash. 
We have won with the silver bullet before. We financed 
Europe in the greatest war we ever fought, and that is how we 
won. Of course, British courage and British tenacity always 
come in, and they always will, but let us remember that British 
cash told too. When the others were quite exhausted, we were 
getting our second wind, and our third, and our fourth." 

The contrast between these two speeches, even allowing 
for the difference of occasion, is notable, and suggests what 
was doubtless the fact, that Mr. George was hovering between 
two schools of thought that had already declared themselves. 
The one looked to victory through man-power in the field ; the 
other held that the greater the sacrifice in the field the more 
would victory be retarded. In those early days Mr. George 
was torn between the two ideas ; as months passed he drew 
closer to the school of "all in," and it was by that school that 
he was carried to the supreme direction of the war. But later 
still doubts afflicted him, and the "silver bullet" theory reas- 
serted its appeal. To the end probably he never could quite 
make up his mind with which school reason lay. Opportunist, 
in no evil sense, he shifted from side to side of the dividing 
line in obedience to the varying pressure of military and eco- 
nomic argument. 

It was not until nearly the close of 1914 that Mr. George 
began to be attached to one military theory which was destined 
to have a great influence on his policy and on his relations 
with his colleagues. He became impressed with the idea which 
was commonly held, even among military men in France, that 
there was likely to be an enduring deadlock on the western 
front. In France M. Briand, for whom he conceived a strong 
personal liking, based perhaps on some considerable afiinity 
in character and temperament, held views similar to his own, 
and the two became the protagonists of a policy of interven- 
tion in the Eastern theatre of war. A war of position on the 



180 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Western front, a war of movement on the Russian, an attack 
meanwhile on Austria through Serbia, in order to draw the 
Germans away from Russia — this was the policy embodied in 
a memorandum which Mr. George submitted to his colleagues 
of the War Council on the first day of 191 5. He suggested the 
landing of 600,000 troops at Salonika or on the Dalmatian 
coast ; M. Briand was simultaneously proposing to his Govern- 
ment that a force of 300,000 French should be landed at one 
of the Adriatic ports to co-operate with the Serbs and British. 
Such intervention, Mr. George argued, would bring about the 
entry of Greece on the side of the Allies, and would also 
tempt Rumania (a country in which, despite a Hohenzollern 
king, national feeling was favourable to an attack on Hun- 
gary) to abandon her neutrality. Nor was it likely that Italy 
would remain unmoved. 

Mr. George's plan was not adopted then, and was never 
adopted in its entirety, but the very natural desire to "find an 
easier way round" prevailed in other minds. On the very day 
Mr. Lloyd George's scheme was pressed a telegram was re- 
ceived from the Grand Duke Nicholas requesting a demon- 
stration against the Turk. This provided a new argument for 
Mr. Churchill, who had already advocated an attack on Gallip- 
oli with a view to the capture of Constantinople, and the 
Dardanelles commitment which ensued implied the definite 
shelving of the George-Briand scheme. 

Mr. George, however, remained unconvinced, and when 
the naval attack on the Gallipoli forts failed he took the line 
that "the army should not be required or expected to pull the 
chestnuts out of the fire for the navy, and that if the navy 
failed we should try somewhere else in the Balkans, and not 
necessarily at the Dardanelles." To his schemes for a Salonika 
expedition and for aiding Serbia Mr. George returned again 
and again. He wanted to "knock-out" Austria, Germany's 
great reserve for man-power ; meanwhile holding the Turk ; 
the Turkish affair he regarded as essentially a side-show. 

From the beginning of 191 5, indeed, we have definitely to 
consider Mr. George as the third soldier in the cabinet; the 
Field Marshal had now to reckon not only with the ex-sub- 



AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS 181 

altern, but with the former Volunteer private. It is but fair 
to say that in some ways Mr. George better reaHsed the nature 
of the war, and the relations of its parts to the whole, than his 
colleagues or the general staff. His Eastern scheme may have 
been quite impracticable, but it did recognise the importance 
of Austria, which was never sufficiently understood in Great 
Britain. Victory against the Turk might perhaps be, in Mr. 
Churchill's phrase, a "victory such as the world had never 
seen," but it would certainly have decided nothing at that 
stage. But in theory at any rate Mr. George's schemes were 
admirable. There was something big about them, and noth- 
ing of the hmited-liability, tip-and-run, two-pence-coloured- 
adventure character which has tempted British statesmen to so 
many costly and tragic failures, from Walcheren to Gallipoli. 
Apparently the British military advisers never went to the 
trouble of explaining to Mr. George's satisfaction why his 
plans, decisive if they could be executed, were incapable of 
execution. It was a mistake, though perhaps a natural and 
pardonable one. Such a man was bound to form opinions of 
his own ; he was bound, when he got the power, to attempt to 
be something more than a use-and-wont head of the Govern- 
ment like Mr, Asquith; and time would not have been lost in 
convincing him instead of merely treating his ideas as the 
impertinences of a politician posing as a strategist. 

The natural result of the peremptory condemnation of his 
plans was that Mr. Lloyd George conceived but a very mod- 
erate admiration for the British military chiefs. Sir Henry 
Wilson was the almost solitary exception, and it may there- 
fore be inferred that he was shrewd enough to humour the 
strategic fancies which he afterwards made the subject of pub- 
lic scoff. The French generals, on the other hand, impressed 
Mr. George. For the most part they could talk well; they 
were quick to recognise that, for good or ill, Mr. George must 
be an important factor in the war; and when they were least 
convinced they were most flatteringly polite. It was good 
policy in the highest sense. Probably the genius of Foch would 
never have had full scope, even in the last awful emergency, 
had he begun by treating Mr. George as a mere meddler. 



182 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

The general public did not know that thus early the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer was striving to influence the course 
of policy. Outwardly it seemed that his sole direct interest in 
the war was concerned with the supply of munitions. To this 
he strenuously applied himself after the rejection of his Balkan 
project. 

It was on a Sunday afternoon in February in his own con- 
stituency at Bangor, that he first raised the question which 
was soon to become of such vital political import: — 

"We stand more in need of equipment than we do of men. 
This is an engineers' war, and it will be won or lost owing to 
the eflForts or shortcomings of engineers. Unless we are able 
to equip our armies our predominance in men will avail us 
nothing. We need men, but we need arms more than men, and 
delay in producing them is full of peril for this country." 

But of the real nature of the shell problem Mr. George had 
at this time no inkling. He knew there were labour troubles 
on the Clyde, and declared that it was "intolerable that the life 
of Britain should be imperilled for a farthing an hour." He 
believed that efficiency was being sapped by drink — "a greater 
enemy than Germany, Turkey, or Austria" — and seemed for 
the moment almost inclined to press the country to follow Rus- 
sia's path of prohibition. But though he had been since Octo- 
ber one of a ministerial committee to advise the War Office on 
the production of guns and munitions, he seems to have had 
very hazy ideas of the true state of affairs. In February this 
committee had handed over its duties to a new body of ex- 
perts, who reported that there was "a present and continuously 
increasing need for shells and fuses." On March 9, following 
a question by Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. George introduced a De- 
fence of the Realm Bill giving the government power to take 
over all factories capable of being used for war production. 
The engineering industry, he explained, was to be organised 
in order to obtain increased output, and was to be directed by 
a central committee under "a good strong business man with 
some go in him who would be able to push the thing through." 
Men with push, men with go, and men with push and go com- 



AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS 183 

bined, were the fashion from this time onward, and for many 
months the legend grew that the country was being saved by 
its men of business. Later in the same month Mr. George 
announced that profits of controlled establishments were to be 
limited, and appealed to the trade unions to play their part by 
suspending their restrictive regulations. In the middle of April 
the push-and-go committee was absorbed by another of which 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself was chairman. 

But all this was of little relevance to the real drama of the 
shells, and some time was to elapse before Mr, George was 
made aware of what was passing in France. Up to the Battle 
of Festubert the shells affair was simply a difference between 
two eminent soldiers, one of whom had simply to consider his 
requirements in the field, while the other was compelled to take 
into account many other things. In France Sir John French 
was demanding more and more high explosive shell ; in White- 
hall Lord Kitchener took up an attitude the inwardness of 
which has been obscured rather than elucidated by the immense 
volume of controversy concerning it. 

The truth was that he had not, and in no conceivable cir- 
cumstances could have had at the time, enough of all kinds of 
ammunition to satisfy all the wants of the Expeditionary 
Force. But it was his nature to give anything but the real 
reason for not fully complying with every possible demand, and 
this systematic secretiveness probably accounts for the alleged 
"round abuse" of Sir Archibald Murray, Sir John French's 
emissary, and the declaration that "the British army ought to 
be able to take positions without artillery." ^ 

It is quite possible that Lord Kitchener did not grasp fully 
the needs of the situation. But it is inconceivable that a soldier 
of his high intelligence should ever have said, with complete 
seriousness, anything of the kind imputed to him. He might 
easily, however, have said it (or anything else) rather than let 
all sorts of people know his exact position as regarded muni- 
tions. Aware how everything somehow found its way to the 
clubs, and thence nobody knew where. Lord Kitchener may 
have carried to excess his natural tendency to keep things to 

^Col. Repington, "The First World War." 



184 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

himself. His dilemma was indeed exceedingly awkward. To 
i::et anything like the powers afterwards exercised bv Mr. Llovd 
George, he must take the country into his confidence, and, either 
by his own eloquence or that of ministers, whip it into a frame 
of mind appropriate to action on the heroic scale. But, apart 
from the small ditliculty that Lord Kitchener was no stump 
orator, agitation meant the revelation of facts which must 
inevitably be of the greatest value to the enemy. Earlv in IQ15 
the position was such that a little more pressure might have 
been fatal to the Allies, and such pressure would doubtless have 
been forthcoming had Germany known the precise situation. 
Kitchener seems to have deliberately preferred a slow and 
gradual enlargement of resources to the advertisement of 
deficiency. 

Whatever the case, when public uneasiness and alarm began 
to find strong expression he wrote the Prime IMinister a letter, 
in the course of which he declares : — 

"I have had a talk with French. He told me I could let you 
know that with the present supply of anmiunition he will have 
as much as his troops will be able to use on the next forward 
movement." 

With this in his pocket, the Prime Minister, on April 20, 
replied at Newcastle to criticisms. While stating that "a large 
and rapid increase in the output of munitions has become one 
of the first necessities of the State," he said : — 

"I saw a statement the other day that the operations not only 
of our army, but of our Allies, were being crippled, or at any 
rate hampered, by our failure to provide the necessary muni- 
tions. There is not a word of truth in that statement." 

This reassuring statement had, no doubt, a certain diplo- 
matic inspiration, since Italy was on the eve of decision as to 
her course of action, and it was important that she should not 
be prejudiced by the pessimistic outcry in the London press. 
But the passage was also founded on the very definite testimony 
of the two soldiers who then shared between them the nation's 
trust. 



AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS 185 

On the day following, in the House of Commons, Mr. 
Lloyd George treated the same subject in much the same vein. 
He was quite unsensational. He did not say that the War 
Office could not have done more in the matter of high explo- 
sive shell, but he wanted the House to know what it had done, 
and he quoted figures to show that, if 20 were taken to repre- 
sent output in September, the figure stood at 256 in February 
and 388 in March. These figures were in fact misleading, or 
at least did actually mislead, since the index figures were taken 
by Mr. Bonar Law to refer to high explosive shell, whereas 
they had reference only to 18 pounder shells, which were nearly 
all shrapnel. But the point for the present is that Mr. Lloyd 
George expressed no kind of alarm, and that his speech tempo- 
rarily satisfied the uneasy opposition. He, like Mr. Asquith, 
seemed to be convinced that an alarmist statement was unwise 
politically and unnecessary from every point of view. 

Indeed, when Colonel Repington, prompted by Sir John 
French, came over to London on May 15th to "destroy the 
apathy of the government" (and, as it proved, the government 
itself) he was, on seeinc: Mr. George, "astonished at his igno- 
rance of the facts." "He seemed," says the Colonel, "to know 
nothing that was happening." ^ 

This no doubt was the fact. The Prime Minister at New- 
castle, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Com- 
mons, had both spoken from briefs furnished by Lord Kitch- 
ener. Later it was the habit to denounce the Newcastle speech 
and forget all about that in the House of Commons. It was 
assumed that Mr. George had shown extraordinary and praise- 
worthy prescience, and Mr. Asquith the most censurable blind- 
ness and inertia. Mr. George's reputation can easily afford 
statement of the exact truth. Up to a point he was, like the rest 
of the cabinet, under the impression that matters with regard 
to high explosive were, if not wholly satisfactory, at any rate 
not tragically bad. They were indeed "on a footing which re- 
lieved us of all anxiety, and which enabled us, in addition to 
that, largely to supply our Allies." ^ It was not until Sir John 

*"The First World War." 
* Speech of April 21. 



186 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

French moved that he took action. Then indeed he acted with 
his usual intuition and energy. He recognised in a flash the 
full implications of the situation. The Unionist leaders, like 
himself, had been taken into Sir John French's confidence, and 
were determined to support him. It was clear that the Liberal 
government could no longer stand. The only question was 
whether the survival of certain Liberal ministers could be 
achieved by the formation of a Coalition. 

The change of government was heralded by one or two 
curious indications. On May I2th, two days before The 
Times published Colonel Repington's despatch, embodying the 
evidence furnished by Sir John I'Vench, Mr. Handel Booth, a 
Liberal member, exceedingly friendly with Mr. George, and 
one of the most prominent of his champions on the Marconi 
Committee, asked the Prime Minister whether he had consid- 
ered the propriety of "admitting in^o the ranks of ministers 
leading members of the various political parties." Mr. Asquith 
replied quite definitely that "the step suggested was not in 
contemplation." 

On May i/th. speaking on the motion for adjournment 
over the Whitsuntide recess, Sir Henry Dalziel,^ also a Liberal 
and an old associate of Mr. Lloyd George, remarked that he 
was "coming reluctantly but certainly to the conclusion that 
in this great national crisis it ought not to be entirely on the 
leaders of one political party that the responsibility should 
rest," and he also advocated formation of "a business commit- 
tee to deal with business matters at the War Office." Mr. 
Booth, following Sir Henry, remarked, 'T have not often taken 
upon myself the role of a prophet, but I venture to say that 
the position will compel the formation of a government which 
represents the House more fully than the present one." 

H these predictions were based on mere inference they 
suggest an almost miraculous insight. It is more probable that 
both members were in possession of the best stable informa- 
tion. At any rate it is certain that Mr. George was in advance 
of Mr. Asquith in perceiving the necessity of broadening at 
once the basis of the Government. The publica;ion of Colonel 
* Afterwards Lord Dalziel. 



AFFAIR OF THE SHELLS 187 

Repington's despatch was not needed to convert him ; it merely 
warned him that no time was to be lost. He immediately 
sought Mr. Asquith with something like an ultimatum, and the 
Prime Minister found it necessary to do immediately what he 
had only a few days before said was not even "in contempla- 
tion." 

Mr. George's desire for the inclusion of the Unionist minis- 
ters is easily comprehensible. He was by this time honestly 
convinced that there was danger in the military omnipotence 
of Lord Kitchener. But Lord Kitchener was still so much the 
public idol, and to the confidence he deserved was added so 
much that no man could possibly deserve, that it was dangerous 
to meddle with him. Lord Kitchener had only to resign, giving 
as his reason the interference of politicians, and a merely party 
government must fall. Still worse, no member of such a 
government could hope to survive, least of all a member sus- 
pected of meddling. Now Mr. Lloyd George was determined 
that subservience to Lord Kitchener should no longer be the 
policy of the cabinet; he must know what was being done, 
where, why, and how. He was equally determined to avert, 
if anyhow possible, the catastrophe to the Allied cause which 
would be involved in his own relegation to opposition. 

At this time, as later, Mr. George's faith in himself was a 
political factor of the highest importance. He believed, like 
Chatham, that he could save the country, and that nobody else 
could. But even a temporary exclusion might make the task 
impossible, and such exclusion was threatened from the mo- 
ment that public confidence was disturbed in the Liberal 
ministry, and would continue to be threatened until the spectre 
of an alternative Party government was laid. The only possi- 
bility he saw was Coalition, and for Coalition he declared at 
the first sign of Liberal crumbling. It was unpleasant, doubt- 
less, to part with old colleagues, to modify for ever old rela- 
tions. But at all cost the calamity of a complete change of 
government, involving the loss of his own indispensable serv- 
ices, must be averted. 

Mr. Asquith then had to meet a converging attack. Mr. 
George, putting forward the facts placed at his disposal by 



188 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Headquarters in France, told the Prime Minister that he would 
be "unable to go on." Almost simultaneously the Unionists 
demanded a debate on the conduct of the war. The double 
assault was decisive. Mr. Asquith at once wrote to Mr. Bonar 
Law that "after long and careful consideration" he had decided 
that the war could only be effectively carried on "by a cabinet 
which represents all parties in the State." By the end of the 
first week in June the new government was complete. It did 
not, unfortunately, include the representative of one party — the 
Irish Nationalists, but it did include the representative of their 
Ulster opponents. Sir Edward Carson; and the omission and 
the inclusion combined were destined to produce the most 
calamitous results. But Mr. George's immediate objects were 
gained. His own continuance in power was assured, and on 
the authority of Lord Kitchener a great inroad was now possi- 
ble. A government was established which in no conceivable 
circumstances could disappear as a whole, however its per- 
sonnel might be varied in detail. Nothing, in short, but a revo- 
lution could displace him ; and henceforth he must be inti- 
mately associated with the direct conduct of the war, with a 
power and prestige impossible while Lord Kitchener remained 
supreme. 

The future might be safely left to take care of itself; for 
the present he was in the centre of things. Munitions above 
all were wanted to win the war. He was at the head of the new 
Ministry of Munitions. 



CHAPTER XIV 

MINISTER OF MUNITIONS 

THE country's faith in Mr. George, his faith in himself, 
were briUiantly justified. Seldom has the man been 
better fitted for the work, and it was probably one that no 
other man could have done. 

It was not chiefly technical knowledge, organising capacity, 
or tidiness of mind that were required at that exact moment in 
the head of the Ministry of Munitions. The two supreme 
requisites were vision and courage — ability to see and deter- 
mination to do. Mr. George's virtue was that he cast aside 
from the first all idea of playing for safety. That virtue which 
is "the only security for all other virtues" characterised all his 
proceedings. "What I admire chiefly here," said Dr. Johnson 
on a certain occasion, "is the total defiance of expense." The 
praise is most precisely and literally applicable to Mr. George 
in his munitions plans. His disdain both for expense and for 
the critics of expense was not only magnificent; it was in this 
case the highest wisdom. 

The very defects of the minister were now useful. The first 
necessity was to be what experts would call rash and what 
economists would call profligate. Mr. George's empiricism 
and extravagance had already cost the nation much, and were 
to cost it very much more. But at this juncture it was happy 
indeed that circumstances combined to put almost unlimited 
power in the hands of a man at once untrammelled by tradition, 
naturally disrespectful of the routine mind, unappalled by cost, 
and so self-confident that he would never hesitate to put his 
personal view, or even his chance fad, against the considered 
opinion of whole cabinets and councils. 

Mr. George's first step was to get some reasonably close 
estimate of the number of men who were to be ready for the 

189 



190 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

field at various dates, in order to secure that munitionment 
should proceed in some correspondence with the growth of the 
great new armies. To supply these the existing munition 
plants were of course totally inadequate, and it was hopeless, 
without great extensions, to expect fulfilment of the orders 
which had been showered by the War Office. Further, many 
of the War Office experts, influenced by South African experi- 
ence, had not fully grasped the peculiar necessities of the static 
warfare on the Western front; and Mr. George, a realist in 
such matters, preferred to go for his facts to men with actual 
experience of the battlefields. Big guns, for example, appeared 
to be wanted in great numbers; Mr. George proposed a figure 
astounding to the cabinet, derisory to the experts. Faced 
with general opposition, another minister might have yielded 
or compromised ; Mr. George, though well aware of the risks 
he ran, pledged the country to gigantic orders for which he 
might have been surcharged. This action was fully justified 
by the event. Before the guns were made generals in the field 
were clamouring for more. 

As soon as the ministry was formed weekly progress re- 
ports showing the orders placed, the promised dates of delivery, 
and the actual delivery were required, and it was found that 
out of every hundred high explosive shells promised by con- 
tractors only sixteen were being delivered. This fact could 
not be fairly laid to the charge of the manufacturers or their 
workmen ; the plants then in being could not possibly execute 
more than a small fraction of the orders which an overworked 
and rather bewildered War Office had been in the habit of 
dumping on contractors. It was no mere question of "speed- 
ing up," but one of organising an immense new war industry. 
Great sites had to be acquired. Enormous new factories had 
to be built and equipped ; scores of millions of pounds worth of 
the most modern automatic machinery had to be acquired, and 
the whole enterprise constituted, in the words of an American 
journalist,^ "the biggest engineering feat since the Panama 
Canal." Not only had the ministry to arrange for machines 
to make munitions; it even had to provide machines to make 

*Mr. Roy Martin. 



MINISTER OF MUNITIONS 191 

machines. The vastness of the plan testified to one side of Mr. 
George's genius; another side was revealed in the gay impetu- 
osity with which he overbore all difficulties of detail. To tell 
him that a thing could not be done was only to complete his 
determination that it should be done. 

The inspiring ideas of "get on with it" and "expense no 
object" were undoubtedly sound. War is the most expensive 
as well as the most terrible of human enterprises, and its ex- 
pense, as well as its cruelty and filth, may well be considered 
by statesmen and peoples while peace is still possible. But in 
waging war to be delicate concerning the effusion of blood, or 
horrified over the wastage of treasure is mere imbecility. 
There is even a certain virtue in the ostentation of expense, 
that vaunting and glorying in sacrifice which Mr. George shared 
with another great war minister, William Pitt. It stimulates 
the dullest and the greediest to be shown by the great that 
nothing counts by the side of victory. It is no doubt true the 
Ministry of Munitions spent a great deal more money than was, 
on the most generous calculation, necessary. It may be that 
much was spent unwisely, and that the splendour of the design 
was not matched by a corresponding efficiency of execution. 
Bustle, as Mr. Asquith once acidly said, is not always business, 
and something may have been actually lost by the Prime Min- 
ister making "four separate journeys in a day to Woolwich" 
and dining on bread and cheese after "eating nothing since 
breakfast." We may be at least fairly sure that the salvation 
of the nation was not materially advanced by Mr. George's 
lieutenant, Dr. Addison, taking "nothing but an apple" for 
lunch. With all the bustle, things were "nothing like right" ^ 
at the end of 191 5, and fifty per cent of the high explosive 
shells supplied to the army were ineffective. It was not till 
three months later that affairs were reported as satisfactory. 

But such facts do not materially affect the main truth. The 
foolish legend of a department of supermen, in which miracles 
were common form, has tended in some degree to rob the 
Ministry of Munitions of its very real claims to the gratitude 
of the nation. The ministry's business men were some of 
* Col. Repington, "The First World War." 



192 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

them clever, some of them not so clever, and some thoroughly 
stupid and even unbusinesslike. The only miracle was their 
chief, and proper praise for him — and it is the highest praise 
that can be bestowed — has no relation to his merits as a mere 
organiser. As such, less gifted and courageous men might 
have done as well, or perhaps even better. But no other man 
then in affairs had his vision to grasp at once the vast contours 
of the transaction and his courage to attack it in the grand 
manner, staking his very political existence on the issue. 

Reference has already been made to big guns. In regard 
to these, soon deemed as necessary as high explosives, Mr. 
George's prevision was of enormous service. As Mr. Montagu 
said later, "Mr. Lloyd George ordered far more guns than were 
thought by the War Office to be necessary, and yet received new 
requirements showing that he had not ordered enough." It 
was during a conference with various French generals at 
Boulogne in the summer of 191 5 that he was first impressed 
by the need for big guns, and he decided at once that the re- 
quirements presented by our headquarters staff were altogether 
inadequate. Returning straightway to Whitehall Gardens, he 
was warned by Lord Kitchener that what he demanded in the 
way of artillery could not be produced for three years, but, 
undismayed, he placed his demands before the heads of the 
armaments firms. They also were dubious. But the guns were 
ordered and the guns were delivered. The supply of machine 
guns was also enormously increased under Mr. George's admin- 
istration, but something of the credit for this may fairly be 
awarded to ]\Ir. Asquith, who, after a visit to the front, was 
careful to impress on his subordinate the vital importance of 
this weapon. 

Throughout his connection with munitions production, Mr. 
George's chief anxiety was labour. The trouble was not so 
much with the small minority of definitely unpatriotic men, 
tinged with the ideas which were later to produce the Russian 
collapse. ]\Iore serious was the distrustful attitude of the 
ordinary trade unionist to schemes for "dilution" by women 
and unskilled men. There were many excuses. The trade 



MINISTER OF MUNITIONS 193 

unionist saw large wages made by women and unskilled men. 
He saw vast profits earned despite the legal limitations. The 
ascetic atmosphere of 1914 had yielded to an outburst, prompted 
and justified by the catchword of "business as usual," of luxury 
expenditure. The trade unionist would hardly have been 
human had he not developed some taste for profiteering and 
some suspicion that war-time concessions might be used to 
undermine his position when the war was over. 

Faced by constantly recurrent labour troubles, Mr. George 
alternatively exhorted and threatened, varying fervent appeals 
to patriotism with threats of the employment of powers already 
extensive and easily enlarged. Thus at Manchester he said : 
"I am here to ask you to help us equip our gallant troops with 
the means of breaking through the German lines. I know you 
will do it." A few months later he was remarking that, for 
those that lagged, it was "very useful to have something that 
will jog them along." 

With his power-loving nature he would no doubt have pre- 
ferred the more direct means; and indeed the mere drudgery 
of persuasion is such that it is not surprising that there are 
few autocrats equal to the ex-demagogue. For compulsion 
for the army he had not yet declared, and on grounds of 
expediency he was perhaps still opposed to it. In introducing 
his last budget in May, 191 5, he had expressed the wish that 
the Allied countries would decide how Britain best could help 
them. They could keep command of the seas ; they could 
maintain a great army on the continental scale. They could, 
as in the Napoleonic wars, bear the main burden of financing 
the Continental armies. "Britain can do the first; she can do 
the third ; but she can only do the second within limits if she 
is to do the first and the last." 

No doubt his views were largely determined by his minis- 
terial position. Wherever Mr. George has happened to be, 
there, in his view, has been the centre of things. As Chan- 
cellor he would be naturally impressed by the expense of uni- 
versal military service. As Minister of Munitions he wanted 
both men and money for guns and shells, and was inclined to 
postpone the claims of the army. As late as the Autumn of 



194 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

191 5 he seems to have told Colonel Repington,* over a cigar, 
"not to hustle the government on conscription." But it is 
clear that at a very early period he was impressed with the de- 
sirability of what was afterwards called "industrial conscrip- 
tion." In the Manchester speech already quoted, while paying 
tribute to the "moral value" of the voluntary principle, he re- 
minded his audience that compulsion had been "the greatest 
weapon in the hands of the democracy many a time for the 
winning and the preservation of freedom." 

What he chiefly wanted at this time was unlimited power over 
the civilian population. But "conscription of labour" could 
hardly have been ordained without "conscription of capital," 
and those who would not have called the first slavery would 
certainly have called the second robbery. Mr. George could 
not be given all he wanted, but he was given a good deal. Capi- 
talists were confronted with legal checks on profit-making; 
workers suddenly found that they had not free market for 
their labour. But while a man's work is a very visible thing, 
the manipulation of modern business makes most difficult the 
detection of profits which it is desired to conceal. In practice, 
therefore, the weight of the official hand chiefly descended on 
the workman, who remained distrustful to the end, and if on 
the whole the system of compulsion worked, the fact was due 
rather to the surly patriotism of trade-unionism than to its 
sense of being fairly treated. 

Even the capricious and occasionally irrational despotism of 
the Liquor Board led to much less trouble than might have been 
anticipated, perhaps because Mr. George's enthusiasm was 
tempered by a realistic discretion which grew with his experi- 
ence. During his premiership beer was frequently diverted by 
direct order of the government from perfectly law-abiding dis- 
tricts to the zones of industrial unrest.^ 

By the end of 191 5 the shells and guns question, if not set- 
tled, was in a fair way of settlement, and Mr. Lloyd George 
could without fear throw himself into the next great contro- 

*"The First World War." 
•Statement by Mr. G. H. Roberts, M.P. 



MINISTER OF MUNITIONS 195 

versy. To the adoption of conscription, as already suggested, 
he had no objection whatever in principle. Even in his Pacifist 
days he had toyed with ideas of a sort of citizen miHtia based 
on service for all, and had placed before the cabinet a memor- 
andum in favour of the adoption of the Swiss system. Whether 
the power of impressment should be used, or held in reserve, 
was to him a matter of pure expediency. To Mr. Asquith, on 
the other hand, there was a real principle involved in the volun- 
tary system. In his view a main function of government was 
to tell people what they ought to do, and then let them do what 
they liked. That, when all is said, is the Alpha and Omega 
of Liberalism; and everything else, if it is not Toryism, is 
Socialism. 

On principle, then, there was division in the cabinet, but in 
times of stress principles are usually shelved, and it was largely 
so in this case. The true division was on the queston of ex- 
pediency. The army wanted men ; conscription was admittedly 
the surest, the most direct, and the most convenient way of 
getting them if (i) it could be adopted without shock and if 
(2) it could be worked with discretion. But there were three 
great queries. Would the country, with its profoundly unmili- 
tary and anti-militarist temper, stand conscription ? Could the 
country afford it, in view of naval and other commitments from 
which our conscriptionist Allies were more or less exempt? 
If conscription were stringently and rather woodenly enforced 
(which would assuredly be the case if the power fell into the 
hands of the military authorities) would the wholesale with- 
drawal of men from civilian work endanger many, industries 
necessary for the war? 

On the first question Sir John Simon left the government. 
The second filled with concern Mr. McKenna, the new Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer. The third caused qualms to Mr. 
Runciman at the Board of Trade. Mr. Asquith was on the 
whole with the objectors, and Lord Kitchener, who had learned 
to like and trust Mr. Asquith, was disposed on all grounds to 
support him. He seems not to have regarded conscription as 
an immediate issue, and even if he had done so he would prob- 
ably have hesitated, as a matter of general policy, to give his 



196 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

countenance to the party which was pressing it on the Prime 
Minister. For if Mr. Asquith were forced to resign there 
could be only one successor, and Lord Kitchener had no mind 
to exchange King Log for King Stork. While giving Mr. 
George every credit for being, as he put it on one occasion, 
"out to win," he had never been on cordial terms with the 
Minister of Munitions. There were unpleasant brushes be- 
tween them at the cabinet councils, and Mr. George seems to 
have regaled the military correspondent of The Times (who 
"wanted him for Prime Minister, and Carson for Minister of 
War")^ with severe sayings concerning his colleague. How 
to get Mr. George as Prime Minister was already being dis- 
cussed in the clubs and drawing-rooms which had made history 
in Ulster just before the war. 

The exact moment of Mr. George's conversion to conscrip- 
tion is uncertain. He had been against it when he was at the 
Treasury. He had been lukewarm about it during his early 
months at the Ministry of Munitions. The course of the war 
during the latter part of 191 5 convinced him that it was inevit- 
able. But he was not at once prepared to work whole-heartedly 
with the thorough-going advocates of compulsion. In one 
important respect, indeed, he differed from the soldiers who 
at first led the agitation. They wanted men to feed the French 
furnace; he was unwilling to give them men simply for that 
purpose. In his view Loos was not a British victory but a 
British Golgotha, and he was by no means certain that the army 
should be given more and more men to expend in operations 
defectively conducted. For some time past he had tended 
strongly towards pessimism, and in the preface to a collection 
of his speeches, published a few weeks before Loos, he had 
pointed out the significance of the Russian retreat. Russia had 
finished her contribution. Who was to take her place? 

"France cannot be expected to sustain much heavier burdens 
than those which she now bears with a quiet courage that has 
astonished and moved the world. Italy is putting her strength 
into the fight. What could she do more? There is only Britain 

*Col, Repington, "The First World War." 



MINISTER OF MUNITIONS 197 

left. Is Britain prepared to fill up the great gap that will be 
created when Russia has retired to re-arm? Is she fully pre- 
pared to cope with all the possibilities of the next few months 
— in the West, without forgetting the East?" 

This preface must be regarded as Mr. George's manifesto 
on a new situation. He had now been convinced that it was 
not enough to maintain the command of the sea, to finance the 
Allies, and render a limited military aid. He was a conscrip- 
tionist in mind, though for the moment he asked for nothing 
more than further efforts in the workshops. Meanwhile he 
hoped for a change in strategy. We had failed on the Western 
front, we had failed still more tragically at the Dardanelles, 
but there remained his first idea of a Salonika expedition, and 
the beginning of a new attempt to crush Serbia helped to revive 
his enthusiasm for it. 

Withdrawal from the Dardanelles had for some time been 
favoured by Mr. Bonar Law, and Mr. George and Sir Edward 
Carson were his chief supporters; both wanted the troops so 
released to be used in a Balkan campaign to save Serbia. In 
France a strong party was also anxious for a great move in 
the East, partly because there were political reasons for finding 
a high command for General Sarrail, a good Republican, whose 
claims had been ignored by Joffre. Despite French backing, 
however, and his own most vehement pressure, Mr. George 
could not get his way. There was a revived hope of victory 
at Gallipoli; the men denied to Mr. George were used in an- 
other effort there ; Serbia was left to her fate. Believing as he 
did that his own strategy would have saved an Ally, and per- 
haps have brought us two more, it was natural that these events 
should strengthen Mr. George's conviction that the war would 
never be won unless he got a dominant share in its control. 

The first step to this end was evidently the removal of Lord 
Kitchener; and there is no doubt that when the Secretary -for 
War was persuaded to examine personally the situation at Gal- 
lipoli the hope of the Lloyd George party was that he would 
remain abroad for the rest of the war and that Mr. George 
would assume his still vast authority at the War Office. There 



198 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

was profound disappointment when Lord Kitchener returned 
after a few weeks' absence. The malcontents had only been 
able to effect a minor stroke; the Ordnance Department had 
been transferred from the War Office to the Ministry of Muni- 
tions. Otherwise Mr. Asquith, whose interest it clearly was 
to keep Mr. Balfour on one side of him and Lord Kitchener on 
the other, had contrived to preserve the status quo. 

Those who were plotting for a Lloyd George ministry were 
probably much more disappointed than Mr, George himself. 
In the closing months of 191 5 the premiership was something 
to be avoided rather than sought. That Mr. George at this 
time wanted power — the largest share of power he could get — 
is certain. It is almost equally certain that he had no fancy 
for supreme responsibility. 

Meanwhile Lord Derby, appointed Director General of Re- 
cruiting, had entered on his duties with the curious observa- 
tion that he felt himself to be the "receiver of a bankrupt con- 
cern." The first upshot of his scheme was the cry of "single 
men first," and in January, 191 6, the Prime Minister introduced 
a Bill requiring all unmarried men and childless widowers to 
attest. Regarding this measure Mr. Lloyd George kept silence. 
On the other hand he made no secret of his dislike for the 
next step, which would have had the effect of bringing to the 
colours a certain number of boys, while still leaving the mar- 
ried men. In face of the opposition of the Liberals in the 
government, and many of the Unionists, Mr. George advocated 
a General Service Act. For the moment, however, the only 
result of his intervention was to kill the bill for the conscrip- 
tion of boys. His time, however, was not long in coming. 
At the beginning of May, 19 16, his cautious constancy was 
rewarded by the introduction of a third Military Service Bill, 
placing married and single men on an equal footing. To this 
measure Mr. George accorded strong support. 

"Every great democracy," he said, "which has had its liber- 
ties menaced, has defended itself by resort to conscription, from 
Greece downwards." Washington, Lincoln, the French revolu- 



MINISTER OF MUNITIONS 199 

tionaries had all used this weapon. It had been suggested that 
the working-classes would revolt, or at least murmur : — 

"I object to all this talk of the working classes as if they 
were not an essential part of our community, but as if they 
were a sort of doubtful neutral of whom we may have to be 
careful. This is their country just as much as ours. They 
know this is a struggle for liberty. They have sacrificed more 
liberty than any class; they would lose more by the downfall 
of liberty than any class, and they know that Prussian domina- 
tion would hurt them more than any other class in the country. 
They know more than that. They hope, as we all do, that this 
is the last frenzy of war before it expires. There is no class 
that has greater interest in peace than the working class. They 
know perfectly well that if the Prussians through any means — 
neglect on our part or failure to throw in all our resources at 
the right moment — triumph and become the lords of Europe, 
it will be but the beginning of war, for humanity would not 
long endure that yoke." 

A malicious critic might have made much of the point that 
the law had in fact recently made many distinctions between 
the working classes and the rest of the community, and that the 
orator himself had been responsible for some of the most strik- 
ing of these discriminatory measures. But there was little dis- 
position in any quarter to score such debating points. One 
Labour criticism alone was of a kind to dwell long in Mr. 
Lloyd George's memory. Mr. Philip Snowden acridly re- 
minded the government that the country had lost more men at 
the Dardanelles than it had obtained under the Derby Scheme. 
Mr. George at least was not likely to disregard that- sneer. It 
tended to strengthen his feeling that demands for more men 
were only justifiable if it could be shown that they were well 
used. 

It is of little avail to-day to trace the history of the struggle 
in which Mr. George had now emerged as victor. But there is 
one page in that history, at present blank, which will doubtless 
be filled in. The historian will be curious to know who origi- 
nated the Derby scheme. Who enmeshed Mr. Asquith in his 
pledges to the "married men" ? Who thought of dividing the 



200 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

single and the married so that the latter would clamour against 
serving until all the former had been taken ? The married men, 
automatically converted into warm conscriptionists, assiduously 
dug the pit into which they themselves tumbled a few months 
later. The Liberal members of the government, making no 
demur to the inch proposed at the end of 191 5, were deprived 
of all logical argument against the many ells subsequently de- 
manded. Clearly the mind which contrived all this was of no 
ordinary subtlety, and nobody is likely to credit Lord Derby 
with so large a share of the serpent's wisdom. One is re- 
minded of those old pictures which bear no name, but which 
any connoisseur will confidently declare to be "signed all 
over." 

A few days after his speech on the Military Service Bill, Mr. 
George's attention was momentarily diverted from the war. 
The Easter rebellion in Dublin had impressed on the Prime 
Minister the advisability of attempting an immediate settle- 
ment of the Irish question, since in his view the suspension of 
Home Rule had been mainly instrumental in giving their chance 
to the irreconcilable enemies of Great Britain. Mr. George 
was now asked to confer with the representatives of 
the Nationalist Party, and for a week or two he was engaged in 
discussions with Mr. John Redmond and others. The 
episode is more conveniently treated in connection with the 
general story of Ireland during and after the war, and is only 
mentioned here because destiny had decided that Mr. George's 
connection with the Ministry of Munitions, thus interrupted 
apparently but for the moment, should never be renewed. 



CHAPTER XV 

QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 

ON Tuesday, June 6, 191 6, the nation learned with amazed 
grief that Lord Kitchener had been drowned while on his 
way to Russia. "Never," writes his biographer,^ "since man 
has made the lightning his messenger, did the passing of an 
individual so profoundly move humanity as a whole." This is 
hardly an exaggeration. The whole world, Christian, Moslem, 
and heathen, British and non-British, made some gesture of 
reverence, and it is to be said to the credit of the chief enemy 
that on the whole even Germany was not dead to the promptings 
of chivalry. 

But even the death of Lord Kitchener could not, in such 
times, involve more than a momentary pause, and it so hap- 
pened that on the Wednesday evening Mr. Asquith was quietly 
entertaining one or two political guests at his official residence. 
During the evening he was called out to see Lord Reading, the 
Sir Rufus Isaacs of other days," and found to his astonishment 
that the Lord Chief Justice's errand was to urge that Mr. 
George should be appointed without delay to the vacant War 
Office. It would be no less absurd than uncharitable to at- 
tribute to Mr. George any act or part in this precipitate move 
of his intimate friend. He himself is by no means given to dip- 
lomatic methods of such extreme simplicity, and he would be 
the last to encourage their employment on his behalf. What- 
ever his eagerness, instinct would have told him what proved to 
be the fact — that too much haste in this case meant less speed. 
Mr. Asquith, genuinely fond of Lord Kitchener, felt deeply 
the tragedy of his death; and his well-developed sense of the 
fitness of things was offended by any suggestion of specula- 

* Sir George Arthur, "Life of Lord Kitchener." 
"Then Lord Chief Justice, afterwards Viceroy of India. 

201 



202 ]MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

tion as to the future of the dead man's shoes, while search for 
the dead man's body was still in progress. He therefore took 
rather more time that he might otherwise have done in making 
up his mind regarding the War Office. For the delay there was 
another reason. The Prime Minister's closest supporters were 
not anxious to see Mr. Lloyd George in charge of the army; 
they would have preferred Lord Derby, as a safe and sound, if 
not brilliant minister. But it was never Mr. Asquith's charac- 
ter to resist for long a steady and strong pressure, and in the 
present case the pressure was powerful and unrelenting. 

The truth was that Mr. George was by this time restless 
and unhappy at the Ministry of Munitions. So long as the 
problem was simply one of thinking big things and getting them 
started with "push and go" he could throw his heart into the 
work. But once the system was established the office tended 
to become one of rather wearisome routine and detail, and 
there was not enough to absorb Mr. George's wonderful energ}' 
or to satisfy his restless imagination. The Irish interlude, 
also, did not engage his interest; it seemed rather like side- 
tracking him. So, when the tragedy of the HampsJiirc opened 
the doors of a new theatre of activity, the most important, 
next to the premiership, he was determined not to lose the 
chance, and Mr. Asquith's objections, however fundamental 
they may have been, were worn down. 

To the public the appointment was not only popular; it 
seemed inevitable. Mr. George had won the shells for the 
army; he had won the men for the army. He enjoyed the 
backing of the most powerful section of the Press, which con- 
stantly contrasted his abilities and successes with the follies and 
failures of most of his colleagues. Once Mr. Asquith was 
subdued, the only possible obstacle of a serious kind was objec- 
tion from the Unionist Party. But there were already many 
Unionists who w'ished nothing better than a Lloyd George 
Ministry, and those who thought otherwise could hardly cry 
that the pass was sold when they saw their leader shaking 
hands with him who desired to capture it. The attainment of 
Mr. George's ambition was, in fact, chiefly due to the absence 
of ambition in Mr. Bonar Law. 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 203 

As the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer were all Liberals, Lord Kitchener's 
great office would, by all party reckoning, have devolved on a 
Conservative. But Mr. Bonar Law could hardly care to see 
one of his lieutenants in higher and more active employment 
than himself, while his modest conviction of a consummate 
talent for playing second fiddle made him disinclined to put 
forward claims on his own behalf. This mixture of sensitive- 
ness and humility was the basis of much. Mr. George had 
found a fellow minister of qualities admirably supplementing, 
while in no sense overshadowing his own, a man of no glamour, 
but of much useful clearness of head in small matters, one 
whom he could trust, one not easily jealous (except of his own 
subordinates), one who could take off Mr. George's own 
shoulders precisely those labours and responsibilities for which 
he had least fancy. Mr. George had already seen himself in 
the part of Pitt. He now found ready made exactly the kind 
of Newcastle Pitt would have selected if he could have had his 
choice. Such a partnership was a convenience the greater be- 
cause already there was no telling when the great moment 
would arrive. For from the time Mr. Lloyd George entered 
the War Office close observers recognised that the Prime 
Minister was doomed. It was merely a question when the 
convenient time should come for letting the sword fall. 

The War Office, however, was not quite the place which 
Lord Kitchener had accepted in 1 914. It was not so much 
that the Ministry of Munitions had made inroads on its power ; 
all could be arranged with a complaisant minister in. charge of 
the vacated post. More serious was the fact that a good deal 
of the purely military authority normally in the hands of the 
Secretary had been delegated to Sir William Robertson, Chief 
of the Imperial Staff. The latter had the right to issue orders 
to the army in his own name; it was also his privilege to hold 
direct communication with the War Council of the Cabinet. 

Now nobody could describe Sir William as complaisant. As 
much a self-made man as Mr. George, he knew exactly his own 
mind, and he habitually expressed that mind with the most 
tersely idiomatic directness. Moreover, Sir William was 



204 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

known to hold the strongest opinions that the war would be 
lost or won on the Western front, and that the ideas of Eastern 
strategy favoured by Mr. Lloyd George were founded on a 
dangerous delusion. The two men were almost equally stub- 
born, though in different ways. Mr. Lloyd George, infinitely 
various in means, always ready to sacrifice a little fish if it 
would land a big one, kept his main end always in view; Sir 
William simply relied on the immovability which won him in 
France the nickname of "Le General Non-Non." Sir William 
admired Mr. Lloyd George as a politician who had taken a 
strong line on compulsion, though he was determined to yield 
no jot or tittle of authority; on his side Mr. Lloyd George 
under-appraised the qualities, sound, if not brilliant, of the 
military chief. At one time he had held the idea of getting 
Sir William deprived of his exceptional powers and so reducing 
him to practical impotence. But this would have involved the 
awkward issue of "hands off the army"; a break with the 
military party (which was a great part of Mr. Lloyd George's 
strength) and the defiance of Lord Northcliffe, who had de- 
cided that the soldiers must be left alone. Making the most of 
what he must have considered a bad job, Mr. George decided 
to step into Lord Kitchener's shoes without demanding that 
they should first be stretched. 

Probably he hoped to repeat at the War Office the "push and 
go" methods of the Ministry of Munitions. But what is easy 
in a new department is difficult in the presence of hoary tradi- 
tion. The new minister could not, by making Sir Eric Geddes 
a general, get him appointed to a genuinely military command ; 
for this superman room could be found as Director General of 
Railways, but not as Quartermaster General. Even less could 
Mr. George impress on the soldiers strategic ideas evolved from 
his inner consciousness or suggested by those fertile and pliant 
subordinates who were so apt to capture his sympathy. Sir 
William Robertson would listen stolidly, but also with some 
impatience, to a long series of suggestions, and then veto them, 
each and all, rather like a tired nurse denying an ingenious 
child's complicated pleas to stay up. Nothing would induce 
him to justify his objection by long technical explanations. 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 205 

He took the soldier's ordinary view that it was enough, in such 
matters, to say that a thing was impossible, or impolitic, with- 
out being expected to give the why and the wherefore. 

A few days before Mr. George actually took over the War 
Office, the Somme offensive had started — the first attack made 
on a great scale by the main British armies. By the time the 
movements came to an end in the late Autumn, they had cost 
some 420,000 casualties to the British, 250,000 to the French 
and 720,000 to the enemy. Ludendorff has since admitted that 
our massed attacks always succeeded, and that the German 
morale sulTered as the result of this protracted and appallingly 
bloody battle. But to civilian observers in Great Britain gains 
seemed to bear little proportion to their terrible cost. 

Mr. George, as a civilian, naturally thought the civilian's 
thoughts : he spoke freely, as was his wont, to unofficial 
authorities of his doubts that the war could be won on such 
lines; and once more, looking at the map of Europe, he in- 
dulged the hope of some shorter and less bloody way to victory. 

Months before, when Serbia was threatened with the tragedy 
which was soon to overwhelm her, he had made a memorable 
speech on the text "Too Late" — 

"Too late in moving here ! Too late in arriving there ! Too 
late in coming to this decision ! Too late in starting that enter- 
prise! Too late in preparing! In this war the footsteps of the 
Allied forces have been dogged by the mocking spectre of 'Too 
Late'; and unless we quicken our movements damnation will 
fall on the sacred cause for which so much gallant blood has 
flowed." 

Now, under the disappointment of the Somme, he began to 
wonder whether it was indeed too late to resume the policy 
which had always attracted him. Rumania was showing dur- 
ing the Summer of 191 6 a disposition to enter the war against 
Hungary and Bulgaria, and in August she actually took the 
field. Mr. George began to revive his old Salonika project, 
and when Rumania's unfortunately conceived campaign fell on 
disaster he was found urging with all the eloquence at his com- 
mand that help should be sent. 



206 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

In September he and Mr. Montagu, the new Minister of 
Munitions, met the French Ministers for War and Munitions 
in Paris, and it was announced that "satisfactory conclusions" 
were reached regarding measures discussed for "the most 
effective employment of the joint military resources of France 
and Britain." Sir William Robertson was greatly disturbed by 
this discussion in the absence of any representative of either 
staff, and his uneasiness was communicated to a section of the 
British Press. It was clear to these critics that the Secretary 
for War was meditating "interference with the soldiers" — a 
thing which might well be tolerated when Lord Kitchener was 
alive, but was to be deprecated now he was no more. 

To Mr. George this complaint of "interference" would seem 
no less insincere than stupid. His theory appears to have been 
that it was for him to lay down the general lines of strategy. 
But that would not strike him as "interference," any more 
than twisting a man's thumbs struck a Japanese police official 
as "torture." Interference was meddling with the dull but 
important details, tonnage, transport, supply, reinforcements; 
and with these he had not the smallest wish to concern himself. 
War — such seems to have been his view — could be carried on 
much the same as politics. He had decreed, for example, that 
there should be an Insurance Act, and had supplied the motive 
force to carry it. The details he had left to experts. Did not 
military experts exist for similar purposes? Had not the 
greatest War Ministers used them in that way ? 

It is easy to condemn such an attitude, easier still to ridicule 
it. But, just as one kind of soldier will, like Marlborough, 
inevitably interest himself in politics, so will one kind of states- 
man, like William Pitt, inevitably interest himself in military 
operations. It is not quite enough to consider the matter 
settled by saying that the weight of military opinion in this 
country was wholly hostile to Mr. George's schemes. The 
quality of British military opinion must also be consid- 
ered; and, speaking apart from any particular project, 
it can hardly be denied that the idea of a unity of front — the 
idea which had to be adopted by sheer force of circumstances, 
at the last — was utterly alien to the British military mind. 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 207 

Rumania was Russia's affair; Montenegro perhaps Italy's, cer- 
tainly not ours; Serbia Heaven knew whose. The average 
British officer was keenly alive to the credit of his company, 
regiment, division, corps or army, or, if he were a person of 
really enlarged understanding, of the British army as a whole. 
Very rarely did his sympathies embrace the whole of the 
Allies, or his imagination extend to the map of Europe. 

On the other side Mr. Lloyd George, however mistaken he 
might be in detail, did from the earliest think of the war as 
one war, of the effort of all the Allies as one effort, of the 
disasters of one Ally as the disaster of all. He saw also quite 
clearly what the most distinguished soldier who is not also a 
statesman never sees, that plans to which grave military objec- 
tions can be taken may have compensating political advantages 
of the most vitally important character. Unfortunately for 
Mr. George's point of view however, politically inspired cam- 
paigns had so far been uniformly unfortunate from every point 
of view, and had actually compromised the very political ends 
for which they had been undertaken against military advice. 
If, therefore, the Secretary's standpoint may be understood, it 
is even easier to comprehend the attitude of the Chief of Staff, 

When Bulgaria declared war on Rumania, Mr. George lost 
no time in impressing on the cabinet that something must be 
done immediately, and he did not fail to mention that neglect 
of his advice a year before had led to the crushing of Serbia. 
Left alone Serbia's fate must inevitably be Rumania's. 

"I therefore once more urge that the General Staff should 
carefully consider what action we could, in conjunction with 
France and Italy, take immediately to relieve the pressure on 
Rumania if a formidable attack developed against her. There 
may be nothing in my fears, but no harm would be done by 
being prepared for all contingencies." 

Nothing was done, or at least nothing effective. After 
extraordinary delays an extra division and a half, or there- 
abouts, was sent to Salonika, but though Monastir was taken 
in November, the mischief in Rumania had already been 
accomplished. Mr. George agitated in vain, for Sir William 



208 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Robertson threatened resignation if his views were over-ridden, 
and the Prime Minister, as usual, supported military opinion, 
on the side of which the influential press was now also ranged. 

Mr. George's feelings were deeply wounded. Any sense of 
personal grievance was embittered by the conviction that our 
French Ally was equally puzzled and troubled by the way things 
were going in England. Mr. George had pressed the Salonika 
scheme on the French; now, when M. Briand was heart and 
soul for it, he was denied adequate British support. Doubtless 
there were many moments when Mr. George saw the whole 
stability of the Alliance threatened because his advice was dis- 
regarded by colleagues who accepted as decisive the blunt nega- 
tions of one whom he was inclined to picture as a glorified 
sergeant-major. It may not be that Mr. George believed him- 
self, as one of his colleagues declared, the "inspired instrument 
of the divine will" ^ and that he was therefore bent on ousting 
the soldier who could hardly be envisaged by the most glowing 
imagination as holding a commission from Heaven. But it 
is certain that he felt, quite sincerely, that the war would be 
lost without him. 

An exceedingly able man who has that justification for any 
means he may take to his ends makes a terrible opponent, and 
others besides Sir William Robertson should henceforward 
have taken heed for themselves. Mr. George now saw that he 
could not hope directly to subdue Sir William Robertson. As 
Secretary for War he was in fact the subordinate of one who, 
in his view, should be his subordinate. 

More than once in the past had Mr. George been signally 
defeated, but defeat had always implied only an effort for 
something bigger. Just as he launched into the wider field of 
British politics because he could not break Mr. D. A. Thomas 
in Wales, so now he was impelled towards vaster horizons be- 
cause he could not break Sir William Robertson in Whitehall. 
His power as Secretary of State was inadequate, in the peculiar 
circumstances, to quell one with whom flattery, eloquence, 
cajolery, threats, promises, or conjurations were equally futile. 
It was therefore necessary that he should have more power. 
*"The First World War," by Colonel Repington. 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 209 

He must be in a position to dictate, either as Prime Minister 
or as the master of the Prime Minister. 

All that was to follow — and the chain of consequence is 
still far from complete — was determined from the moment Mr. 
Asquith definitely came down on the side of the soldiers ; and 
centuries hence Great Britain and the world may still feel the 
effects of Mr. Asquith's embarrassed and hesitating choice. 
Clearly — so the position must have presented itself to Mr. 
George — he could not, as Secretary of State, exercise a decisive 
influence on war policy, and that decisive influence he must 
have; it were almost impiety, it were at lowest treason, to 
renounce it. 

Without obstacles he could win the war. Sir William 
Robertson, as the immediate obstacle, must be removed. But 
behind Sir William was Mr. Asquith, who upheld him. This 
syllogism was sinister. 

But it may be doubted whether Mr. George would have pro- 
ceeded to the conclusion at this moment but for two things. 
The first was the war position. Despite unfortunate episodes, 
the outlook to a judicious observer might appear far from dis- 
couraging. Russia seemed a brighter spot; one danger, that 
of the ascendancy of the pro-German party, was disposed of 
by the dismissal, after most damaging revelations, of the Prime 
Minister Stunner; the other danger that of the frightful 
Soviet upheaval which destroyed Russia's military power, was 
not yet to be foreseen. Germany was perceived to be distinctly 
weaker, though her enfeeblement was naturally less apparent 
to the Allies, than to Ludendorff and Hindenburg. In reality 
her army had been "brought to a standstill" and "utterly worn 
out." ^ Her economic attrition had proceeded far, her wheat 
and potato crops had failed; and Austria was still worse off. 
In all the enemy lands the populations were growing restive. 
Judged by the map, there might be no consolation for the 
Allies. Judged by factors known to the well-informed, the 
situation was much brighter than it appeared by that very 
rough test. 

In fact, Germany was on the eve of launching her first open 
* Hindenburg. 



210 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

approach for a general peace. To a cool judge, assisted by 
much information denied to the public, it must have seemed the 
first time that victory was in sight, and indeed only the mourn- 
ful accident of the Russian revolution prevented the realisation 
of these hopes in 191 7. The premiership was therefore a much 
less calamitous inheritance than it might have seemed at the 
end of 191 5. Mr. Lloyd George no doubt did not want the 
premiership, and would willingly have left it in Mr. Asquith's 
hands if he could have attained the power he wanted by other 
means — the milder means by which he in fact attempted to 
compass his object. But there was now no reason why, if he 
must proceed to extremities, he should not do so with a certain 
lightness of heart. If Mr. George so pessimistic in public were 
privately of opinion that as prime minister he would not have 
to wait long for victory, the mistake was excusable. There 
seemed every reason to anticipate an early and triumphant 
conclusion to the war. 

The second determining circumstance was the affair of the 
palm kernels. It seems a trifle, but it is the tragedy of human 
affairs that trifles may be so important. The whole domestic 
situation was suddenly transformed by a debate in the House 
of Commons on a subject about as remote from the war as 
could well be imagined at a time when everything had some 
sort of connection with the dominating issue. 

It so happened that in the closing months of 1916 Mr. 
George had hardly a close associate in the cabinet. The Liberal 
ministers were apparently devoted to Mr. Asquith, whose 
primacy had again and again been declared a national necessity, 
however much his policy might be criticised in detail. Mr. 
Balfour and Lord Robert Cecil were also counted as the Prime 
Minister's men, and other Unionists had been somewhat alien- 
ated from Mr. George by reason of his conflict with the military 
authorities whom they were by tradition disposed to uphold. 
The only prominent member of the party in close touch with 
the Secretary of State for War was Sir Edward Carson, who 
a year before had left the ministry in anger because his advice 
in favour of help to Serbia had been disregarded. Mr. Bonar 
Law, indeed, was still friendly to Mr. George ; but his attitude 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 211 

to the Prime Minister was irreproachable, though at a little 
later date he quaintly acknowledged "little interest" in Mr. 
Asquith. The latter's position had seldom seemed more fully 
established, despite Zeppelin vigils, raiding cruisers, subma- 
rines, food queues, and other war plagues, than in the early 
days of November 1916. 

Then there suddenly arose that "wind from the Fronde" 
which was destined, before it fell, to blow Mr. Asquith from 
the Treasury Bench and No. 10. A debate took place in the 
House of Commons on the disposal of enemy properties, rich 
in kernel-bearing palms, in Nigeria. The government pro- 
posed that they should be sold in the open market, w^here 
neutrals and foreign friends might bid. A minority, composed 
of members who had been distinguished for their zeal for 
tariff reform, held that the right of bidding should be restricted 
to British subjects. They were ably led by Sir Edward Carson 
who, in a fervid speech, "prayed" the House "not to send 
out a message to our suffering fellow-subjects — aye, to our 
soldiers in the trenches — that the war is being waged, not for 
the British Empire, but for neutrals." This moving suppli- 
cation was not granted, but in the division sixty-five Unionists 
accompanied the orator into the lobby against the government. 

Mr. Bonar Law, highly sensitive on the subject of his leader- 
ship, was forced to ponder his position. His name has been 
coupled with Newcastle's, and though it would be unjust to 
institute a comparison with that bundle of eccentricities, 
absurdities and dishonesties, there was one point in which the 
two men really had something in common. Mr. Law, like 
Newcastle, relished precisely that side of politics which to most 
great statesmen is either a drudgery or a bugbear. He was 
possessed by no passion for power and domination on the 
greater scale. In the war he was quite content to leave another 
to direct the storm. He had no desire to dictate strategy, to 
inspire diplomacy, to lecture an ally or thunder at an enemy. 
So far as the war was concerned he was ready to serve wher- 
ever others thought him most useful. But he had much quiet 
enjoyment in the privileges, prestige, fuss and fiddle-faddle 
attaching to the command of a party. He found in managing 



212 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

party affairs, bestowing party patronage, and giving party 
judgments a pleasure analogous to that which a man will feel 
in running a racing stable, though he never longs tor the excite- 
ment of riding a steeplechase. It was enough that every candi- 
date at a by-election should wear the Law colours, and that 
in every claim or complaint, every dispute as to qualifications, 
every charge of boring or pulling, meet deference should be 
paid to him as the head of a political Jockey Club. 

Unfortunately his position had never been quite ascertained. 
He had been elected as a papal choice ; and had accepted election 
on the expressed condition that he would retain the leadership 
only so long as he retained the confidence of the majority of 
the party. That confidence was now threatened on precisely 
the one issue of all others to cause him alarm. Mr. Law had 
been chosen as of the straitest sect of the Tariff Refonners, 
a man without fiscal fear or reproach. But once already, by 
an unhappy fatality, he had disappointed the faithful; he had 
been forced virtually to abandon the famous food taxes. Now 
a second heresy hunt seemed to be starting. He heard the 
grumblings of the palm-kernel malcontents with much the 
same affright that fills a stag when his ear catches the distant 
music of the pack. It was the same pack that, with patient 
malice, had at last brought down his fleet and resourceful pre- 
decessor. "B. M. G." — ''Balfour must Go." Why not 
"B. L. M. G." ? Mr. Law was very unhappy. There had been 
no disaster in the Lobby. But, as he knew by experience, that 
was no guarantee. The thing w-as serious ; there was no mis- 
taking the lean and hungry look of Cassius Carson ; perhaps 
some envious Casca was already shaq^ening his knife; there 
might be a well reputed Brutus in the background to give re- 
spectability to the whole affair. 

Mr. Law looking nervously round to see that he was not too 
near Pompey's statue, thought deeply, and the result of his 
meditations was decisive of much more than his ow^n position. 
He made up his mind that, for the sake of a quiet life. Sir 
Edward Carson had better be brought back into the govern- 
ment. 

But there were difficulties. Placable and easy as was Mr. 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 213 

Asquith in general, prone as he was to interpret "national 
unity" in terms of obliging his cabinet colleagues, he drew a 
line; he would have nothing to say to the re-introduction of 
Sir Edward Carson. First, his experience of Sir Edward 
Carson had not particularly impressed him from the point of 
view of efficiency. Secondly, Sir Edward had done and said 
things not easy for the gentlest to forgive. Thirdly, it was 
understood that the only office Sir Edward cared to take was 
the Admiralty, and Mr. Asquith was quite resolved that Mr. 
Balfour should not be ousted, the more especially since a con- 
certed press campaign was then raging against the great Con- 
servative. 

Probably this particular little wheel would not have got en- 
meshed with other much larger wheels, thus far revolving in- 
effectively, but for the action of a very adroit unofficial per- 
sonage with a marked taste and talent for such mechanical ex- 
periments. About five years before the outbreak of war 
the country had been invaded by a Mr. "Max" (born William 
Maxwell) Aitken.^ Mr. Aitken came, saw, and conquered. 
In 1909 he was utterly unknown in English politics and society, 
and very little known to the business world of London. He 
had, however, one considerable advantage — the friendship and 
distant relationship of Mr. Bonar Law. Both came from 
Canada. Both were sons of Scottish clergymen. Both had 
achieved business success before turning to politics. But there 
was this difference. Mr. Law's success was moderate, com- 
monplace, and obvious. Mr. Aitken's was enormous, romantic 
and mysterious. Mr. Law would have made on his commercial 
side a rather dull and short chapter for a new "Self Help." Mr. 
Aitken was a Monte Cristo on the modern plan. There were 
whispers that he had done wonderful things as a boy in the 
West Indies; that in Canada, at an age when most young men 
of middle class parentage are still concerned over their tailors' 
bills, he had amassed a great fortune by the boldest ventures; 
that his present wealth was vast even when reckoned by 
twentieth century standards. 

Money on such a scale is a passport both to Westminster and 
* Later Lord Beaverbrook, 



214 ]MR. I.I.OYD GEORGE 

May fair; such money with such a friend in high places was 
quite irresistible. With amazing rapidity Mr. Aitken attained 
the immediate objects of his desire. He got elected for Ashton- 
under-Lyne, he received a knighthood, he acquired control of 
a London daily newspajjer, and, allying himself to the extreme 
Tariff Reformers, he reached a position of unobtrusive but 
considerable authority in the inner councils of the Conservative 
Party. He remained intimate with Mr. Bonar Law. He 
gained the warm friendship of Sir Edward Carson. As Mr. 
Lloyd George drifted away from his Liberal colleagues. Sir 
Max Aitken paid him more and more court and was more and 
more favourably received. He was, in short, a born go- 
between, one of those by whom, according to Burke, the world 
is governed, since they "influence the persons with whom they 
carry on the intercourse by stating their own sense to each of 
them as the sense of the other ; and thus they reciprocally master 
both sides." 

Sir Max had a task of some delicacy. There was a wide- 
spread feeling in the country that the conduct of the war was 
hampered by vacillation and lethargy in high quarters. The 
Prime INIinister was credited with a Spanish partiality for to- 
morrow as against to-day. The Morning Post had come to the 
point of advising its readers to back Mr. George "without 
thought of the past or fear of the future." The Liberal War 
Committee, M'hich regarded Mr. George as its leader, could 
claim a great part of the vigour and ability of the party. But 
the great weight of inertia was on Mr. Asquith's side, and the 
following of Sir Edward Carson alone was no compensation. 

Clearly, unless Mr. Law could be secured, and could carry 
with him urban and suburban Conservatism, nothing could 
be done. But it happened at this very time that there was, on 
account of Mr. George's differences with the Chief of Staff, 
less accord between him and the Unionist leader than there 
had been before, or than there was later, while between Mr. Law 
and Sir Edw^ard Carson passages of some asperity had taken 
place. These difticulties, however, only stimulated the zeal of 
Sir Max Aitken, who, detesting Mr. Asquith and all his works, 
was determined to act the part of kingmaker. The three 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 215 

leaders were brought together, the Canadian financier acting as 
"host and go-between." ^ The four met at breakfast, luncheon, 
and dinner and sometimes it might almost be said that the 
length of their confidences merged one meal into the other. 
The astute Sir Max persuaded his friends that nothing could 
be done until the countenance of Lord Northcliffe's newspaper 
group had been secured. This assured, the great adventure 
might go forward. 

It is necessary, for the full comprehension of what followed, 
to seize the point of view of each of the four. All had, for 
different reasons, a wish to change the political position, and at 
certain points the wishes of each coincided with those of the 
rest. All, no doubt, were honestly dissatisfied with the way 
affairs were going, and felt that improvement could only lie 
along the lines of a tighter control by a smaller body than the 
cabinet. But each saw the affair from his own special angle 
of vision. 

Sir Max Aitken, probably, was actuated chiefly by a desire 
to see people whom he liked, and from whom he had much to 
expect, in the place of people whom he disliked and who could 
certainly have no motive for advancing his rank or making use 
of his abilities. Such men, further, love such transactions for 
their own sake; they excite and they flatter. 

Sir Edward Carson's position was little less simple. He 
wanted to get back to the government as First Lord of the 
Admiralty. If in doing so he should upset the Prime Minister 
his satisfaction would scarcely be diminished. 

Mr. Bonar Law wanted Sir Edward Carson back mainly be- 
cause his own position might be threatened by Sir Edward 
Carson's continuance in opposition. Such a threat was not 
only personally disturbing; it might also be most dangerous to 
national unity. Mr. Law may well have thought that a split in 
the Unionist party was not only a personal and sectional 
disaster, but a national calamity to be avoided at almost any 
cost. But nearly to the last the attitude of Mr. Law to the 
Prime Minister was sharply distinguishable from that of any 
of his three colleagues. Much as he might be dissatisfied with 
'A writer in the "Atlantic Monthly." 



216 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

the conduct of the war, much as he might desire a new ma- 
chinery for dealing with it, he continued to put aside any idea 
of deposing Mr. Asquith. It unfortunately happened, how- 
ever, that Mr. Law went to Sutton Courtney for a week-end 
just before the final crisis. He set out in deep gloom, his mind 
occupied to exclusion with weighty matters which he wished to 
discuss at length and in quiet with the Prime Minister. Actu- 
ally he found himself in the midst of a lively party bent on 
"forgetting the war." What with golf without and round 
games within, Mr. Law had no opportunity of engaging the 
Prime Minister's attention. One kind of man might have taken 
lightly enough the pardonable inclination to unbend momen- 
tarily after a week of much work and anxiety. Anodier kind 
of man might have ejaculated (with tlie late Sir Henry Camp- 
bell-Bannerman) "Enough of this fooling." and taken Mr. 
Asquith prisoner to some quiet room. Mr. Law, modest in 
manner, puritanical in temper, was merely shocked and silenced ; 
and he returned to town in a mood to listen more complacently 
to suggestions that reform, to be effective, must be radical 
indeed. 

There remains the special position of Mr. George. We 
have seen that he was not likely to view the situation quite so 
gloomily as members of Parliament and the outside public 
almost necessarily did. But there can be little doubt that he 
was convinced that all the solid advantages of the Allies might 
be thrown away if there were a continuance of the belief that 
"time was on their side," and that nothing was wanted but an 
unimaginative persistence in routine. Victory must not only 
come, but come quickly; apart from the danger of the pro- 
verbial slip between the cup and lip there was the fearful fact 
of a daily expenditure of from four to five millions. Mr. 
George had long ceased to believe that the existing administra- 
tion was capable of the energ^^ vigilance, or foresight neces- 
sary. He desired the formation of a small War Cabinet ex- 
clusively devoted to thinking out and deciding promptly great 
questions concerning the conduct of the war, and also the 
setting up of special authorities, headed by business men of 
tried capacity, in order to deal with shipping, food supply, and 



i 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 217 

other matters of scarcely less vital import than movements in 
the field. The deficiencies of a peace-time cabinet in war were 
afterwards alarmingly illustrated in the report of the Darda- 
nelles Commission, and they had always strongly impressed 
Mr. George. So far, however, he had been unable to go beyond 
protest. Now it seemed that the time had really come for a 
decisive stand ; the old "must" coincided with a new "can," 
Mr. George wanted to be head of the War Cabinet, with prac- 
tically dictatorial powers ; he wished Mr. Asquith to remain 
Prime Minister, but to relinquish all war control. 

Mr. Asquith, in short, while retaining his titular dignities, 
was to occupy the place which Mr. Bonar Law afterwards 
filled — the place of Assistant Prime Minister, charged with 
keeping the House of Commons in a good temper and looking 
after the non-military affairs of the government. For Mr. 
George, honestly believing that it was his own mission to win 
the war, was equally convinced of Mr. Asquith's incapacity to 
do so. In truth Mr, Asquith, under the weight of a cruel pri- 
vate grief, was at this time much broken down; and his di- 
minished energies were further hampered by his inability to put 
aside all the demands of society on a Prime Minister. Mr. 
George, who had happily been spared personal affliction, and 
who was, moreover, free from the enervation of social calls, 
was all vigour and high spirit. 

The Prime Ministership itself, it cannot be too strongly in- 
sisted, was not wanted. Mr. George cared little for titular 
dignity ; what he desired was power. Part of the scheme for 
weakening Mr. Asquith's position was the exclusion from 
effective control of Mr. Balfour, Lord Lansdowne, Sir Edward 
Grey, and Mr. McKenna, the four ministers on whom the 
Prime Minister could chiefly rely for support. If this could 
have been effected without the disturbance that actually fol- 
lowed Mr. George's position would have been in many ways 
strengthened. There would have been no split in the Liberal 
party, and the maintenance of Mr. George's authority would 
have been far less dependent on his personal genius and dex- 
terity. He would also have been able to bestow reward exactly 
where he thought there was desert. As the events fell out, 



218 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

when he came to form his government, he was too much in 
the hands of the Unionists to be able to consider his friends in 
the measure which the character of their services justified. 
For example, he was greatly indebted during 1 916 to the good 
offices of the Jewish ministers, yet when he came to distribute 
offices there was only a minor place for Mr. Herbert Samuel 
and none immediately for Mr. Montagu. Mr. Samuel at once 
declined a post he considered unequal to his merit and ex- 
perience, and became a hostile critic. In providing later for 
Mr. Montagu; Mr. George had to offend many of his Con- 
servative supporters, and accept dangerous experiments in 
India. 

By the end of November the prandial enchantments of Sir 
Max Aitken had accomplished their purpose, and on the morn- 
ing of the last Friday in November Mr. George had an inter- 
view with the Prime Minister. He presented a "dark estimate 
and forecast of the situation, actual and prospective." This 
pessimism Mr. Asquith did not "altogether share," but he 
agreed that things were "critical," that the War Committee 
of the Cabinet was large and cumbrous, and that it should be 
reconstituted. On this subject Mr. George left a memorandum, 
in which he proposed : 

(i) That the War Committee should be reduced to three 
members, and should consist of the Secretary of State for War, 
the First Lord of the Admiralty, and one Minister without 
Portfolio. One of the three to be chairman. 

(2) That the War Committee should have full powers, 
subject to the Prime Minister's control, to direct all questions 
connected with the war ; 

(3) That the Prime Minister should have discretionary 
power to refer any question to the Cabinet. 

Later in the day Mr. Asquith transmitted a considered reply 
to these suggestions. He agreed that the Secretary of State 
for War, First Lord, and some other Minister with little or no 
departmental preoccupation should form the "compact com- 
mittee," and was "inclined to add" the Minister of Munitions. 
But he laid down, quite firmly, that of this Committee the 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 219 

Prime Minister must be chairman. He could not be relegated 
to the position of "an arbiter in the background or a referee in 
the Cabinet." Further, the ultimate authority of the Cabinet 
must be preserved. 

This was not at all the sort of letter any of the Four wanted. 
One phrase in particular must have been extremely objection- 
able. "I purposely do not in this letter," said Mr. Asquith, 
"discuss the delicate and difficult question of personnel." The 
implication is plain. Mr. Asquith had been apprised of the 
plan for replacing Mr. Balfour by Sir Edward Carson, a plan 
essential to all the larger schemes of Sir Max Aitken's friends — 
and had vetoed it. Unless, therefore, the Prime Minister's 
resolution could be broken down, the middle course Mr. George 
favoured was impossible. He must be supreme in title as well 
as in power or nothing. With Mr. Asquith as chairman, no 
drastic changes could be expected, and Mr. George would still 
be subject to the annoyance of delay, discussion, and military 
opposition. It was clear, therefore, that Mr. Asquith must 
either be left virtual master of the situation, or that he must 
be deposed, and to depose him it was necessary to prepare the 
country through the press. 

On Saturday, December i, articles appeared in the Daily 
Express and other journals to the effect that a new War 
Cabinet was to be formed with Mr. Asquith as chairman, Mr, 
Lloyd George as "acting chairman," and Sir Edward Carson 
and Mr. Balfour as its other members. This was evidently 
the last kite of compromise. H Mr. Asquith did not care to 
accept it, he must abide the consequences. 

On this Saturday negotiations were not continued. The 
Prime Minister left London for Walmer Castle, Mr. George 
for Walton Heath. On the Sunday morning an article in 
Reynold's Newspaper," controlled by Sir Henry Dalziel, so 
long and intimately associated with Mr. Lloyd George, startled 
those members of the government who, however desirous of 
giving Mr. George a free hand, or even of seeing him ulti- 
mately at the head of the government, were disposed to believe 
that more harm than good would result from crisis at that 
moment. The article announced definitely that Mr. George 



220 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

was on the point of retiring, and that while his colleagues were 
still persuading him to reconsider his determination "there was 
little or no chance of any success on their part." This was, of 
course, quite true, Mr. George had made no secret of his in- 
tention to resign in default of the subsequent acceptance of his 
plans; he had actually given (perhaps with a polite ostentation) 
farewell dinners to some of his friends, and had even taken a 
flat in St. James's Court in anticipation of his early departure 
from 1 1 Downing-Street. So nuich for the fact. The reasons 
for his intended severance of relations with Mr. Asquith were 
stated with acrid emphasis : — 

"Mr. Lloyd George has arrived at the definite conclusion that 
the methods of dilatoriness, indecision, and delay which char- 
acterises the action of the present War Council are such, in 
his opinion, as to endanger the prospects of winning the war. 
At the moment there seems every indication of a Lloyd George- 
Carson combination in favour of a more vigorous prosecution 
of the war. Mr. Lloyd George's failure to induce the govern- 
ment to move in time to prevent the tragic reverses of Rumania 
is no doubt the final fact that operated with the Secretary for 
War in coming to this decision." 

The tone of this statement may be profitably compared with 
that of the Daily Express. In the latter, where the influence 
of Mr. Bonar Law is to be sought, the suggestion is com- 
promise. Sir Henry Dalziel, who may be presumed to be more 
concerned with Mr. Creorge's standpoint, announces a definite 
break. In the interval Mr. George had received a letter from 
the Prime Minister reasserting the necessity for his supremacy 
in the War Cabinet. 

This Sabbath was a day of "hurryings to and fro." Mr. 
Asquith was urgently recalled to town by Mr. Montagu. 
Unionist Ministers hastily gathered at Mr. Law's house. 
While protesting against the manipulation of the press, they 
decided to offer Mr. Asquith their resignations unless he would 
agree himself to resign in order to permit of a free reconstruc- 
tion of the cabinet. It would seem, however, that throughout 
the day the main body of Conservative opinion was by no 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 221 

means hostile to the Prime Minister. Lord Edmond Talbot, 
who as a Whip must be supposed to speak with knowledge, 
could say at lunch that day ^ that the House of Commons would 
support Mr. Asquith, and that if Mr. George came in by dis- 
possessing him he "would not last long." 

In the early part of the evening both Mr. George and Mr. 
Law saw the Prime Minister, and though nothing quite definite 
resulted agreement was reached as to the outlines of a com- 
promise broadly on the lines suggested in the Daily Express 
The question of personnel, however, was still left open; Mr. 
Asquith could not yet be got to consent to substitute Sir Edward 
Carson for Mr. Balfour. This evening Mr. George for the 
first time suggested the inclusion in the War Cabinet of a 
Labour Minister. After the interview Mr. Asquith went back 
to Mr. Montagu's dinner, and it was from that Minister's 
house that he issued the official statement that "The Prime 
Minister, with a view to the more effective prosecution of the 
war, has decided to advise His Majesty the King to consent to 
a reconstruction of the cabinet." 

One who was present describes the gloom at this dinner- 
party as "awful." The Jewish guests were depressed, believing 
that no good could come of what they regarded as a premature 
crisis, and holding little hope that a crisis could now be avoided. 
Mr. Asquith's more intimate friends were in even lower spirits, 
and tears could be seen in Mrs. Asquith's eyes. She was con- 
vinced that the crash so long threatened had actually come. Mr. 
Asquith, on the other hand, was in the highest spirits. Wholly 
under-estimating the gravity of what he afterwards styled "a 
well-organised, carefully engineered conspiracy," he seemed 
satisfied that the worst was over, and that the arrangement 
would go through. 

Apart from the question of personnel, however, one question 
had been left vague, and as between Mr. Asquith and Mr. 
George it was the crucial point. The really important matter 
was not what Mr. Asquith should be called, — it was not even 
whether he should be in or out of the War Council. It was 
simply what as to be his actual authority ? Was he duly to play 
* To Col. Repington. "The First World War." 



222 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

the part of sluggard king to his pushing Mayor of the Palace, 
or was he still to be in a position, whatever his nominal status, 
to pronounce the formula "Le roi s'avisera." Mr. George is 
fond of history. He may have remembered (after an appar-- 
ently satisfactory conversation) how William of Orange dis- 
appointed the Whig nobles. Given any opportunity, Mr. 
Asquith, backed by Sir Edward Grey or Mr. McKenna, might 
make nonsense of the most cunning plan to eliminate him. 

All this must be considered in relation to the leading article 
in The Times which appeared the next morning. After 
announcing that ^Ir. George had been urging the formation of 
a small War Coimcil "fully charged with the supreme direction 
of the war." the writer continued — 

"Of this Council ]\Ir. Asquith himself is not to be a mem- 
ber — the assumption being that the Prime Minister has suffi- 
cient cares of a more general character without devoting himself 
wholly, as the new Council must be devoted, if it is to be effec- 
tive, to the daily task of organising victory. Certain of Mr. 
Asquith's colleagues are also to be excluded, on the ground of 
temperament, from a body which can only succeed if it is har- 
monious and decisive. On the other hand the inclusion of Sir 
Edward Carson is believed to form an essential part of Mr. 
Lloyd George's scheme, and it is one w^hich will be thoroughly 
understood. . . . He (Mr. Asquith) can hardly fail to have 
been profoundly influenced by the attitude of Mr. Bonar Law, 
who is believed to support Mr, Lloyd George." 

On Sunday Mr. Asquith, perhaps influenced by peacemakers 
like Mr. Montagu, who, while not unsympathetic to Mr. 
George, desired chiefly to postpone a crisis, had gone far to- 
wards surrender — a fact which Mr. George was not slow to use 
when, two days later, he wrote "You have gone back on your 
own proposals." On the Monday two influences operated to 
stiffen his attitude. The first was the mere fact of The 
Times article. On three successive days three different jour- 
nalistic allies of Mr. George had spoken. On Saturday it was 
Sir ALix Aitken ; on Sunday Sir Henry Dalziel ; today it was 
Lord Northclift'e. It is hardly wonderful that the Prime 
Minister should lose no time in writing to Mr. George in terms 
of vigorous protest. "Unless," he said, "the impression is at 



QUARREL WITH ASQUITH 223 

once corrected that I am being relegated to the position of an 
irresponsible spectator of the war, I cannot possibly go on" 
and once more he laid it down that the Prime Minister, if not 
a regular member of the War Cabinet, must retain "supreme 
and effective control of war policy." The irritation caused by 
The Times editorial is in itself sufficient explanation of this 
accession of firmness. But Mr. Asquith had also by now con- 
sulted with his special followers, who made him see that he 
ought not to accept a position of reduced authority. 

Mr. George's reply was couched in light terms. He had 
not, he said, seen The Times, and attached no importance to 
"such effusions" — Lord Northcliffe "wanted a smash," and 
that was all there was to say. He wound up by declaring that 
he fully accepted in letter and spirit Mr. Asquith' s summary 
of the suggested arrangement — subject, of course, to personnel. 

During the day Mr. Asquith gathered further indications 
from Liberal and Unionist quarters suggesting the impossibility 
of "going on" with any schemes which in fact or appearance 
would derogate from his authority, and in the evening he wrote 
to Mr. George that the King had given him authority to require 
the resignation of all ministers in order to form a new govern- 
ment. Starting thus with a "clean slate" he laid down ( i ) that 
the Prime Minister must be chairman of the War Cabinet or 
Council ; some other minister acting as his locum tenens when 
absent; (2) that Mr. Balfour must, and Sir Edward Carson 
must not, be a member of this body; (3) that the full question 
of personnel must be reserved for his own decision. 

Mr. Lloyd George's immediate reply was to withdraw from 
the government, which he charged with "delay, hesitation, lack 
of foresight and vision," the latest example being the failure 
to give support to Rumania. He reminded the Prime Minister 
that he had endeavoured repeatedly to warn the government, 
both verbally and in writing, but to no avail. He was, he said, 
fully conscious of the importance of preserving national unity. 
"But unity without action is nothing but futile carnage, and I 
cannot be responsible for that. Vigour and vision are the su- 
preme need at this hour." ^ 

* The course of these negotiations has perhaps been most clearly and 
succinctly traced in a well documented article in the "Atlantic Monthly" 
of February, 1919. 



CHAPTER XVI 

NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 

MR. GEORGE'S resignation had, naturally, instantaneous 
effect. 
To the public he was the incarnation of the war spirit and 
the mainspring of all war activities. He was the man who, on 
the outbreak of hostilities, had by bold and swift measures pre- 
vented financial chaos, had stopped the outflow of gold, and 
made possible the resumption of the movement of food stuffs 
from overseas, which had practically ceased as a consequence of 
the collapse of foreign exchange. He was the man who had 
given the army its due shells and big guns. He was the man 
who had declared, at just the right moment and in just the 
right way, for military conscription. He was the man who had 
improved transport in France, and who, with a free hand, 
would have averted the Serbian and Rumanian disasters. The 
public mind has no room for niceties and qualifications; and 
since Mr. George had done so much under handicap it was 
ready to assume that, in a position of freedom, he would do 
very much more. Mr. Asquith was forced to recognise that his 
political life would not be worth a moment's purchase if it were 
known that he had let the one great man in the cabinet go. 
What chance could he have against an unemployed national 
hero, entering on a whirlwind campaign for a more strenuous 
war policy ? And meanwhile, of course, the Allied cause might 
be utterly ruined. The latter consideration was decisive. Mr. 
Asquith, however much he might be disposed to fight on other 
grounds, was not the man to risk national disaster, and he de- 
cided on resignation the moment he received Mr. George's 
cartel. 

The King, of course, sent for Mr. Bonar Law, under whom 
Mr. George expressed perfect readiness to serve. Mr. Law, 

224 



NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 225 

however, did not see his way to form an administration which 
could depend on parHamentary support. Probably he did not 
try very hard. Mr. George was now summoned to the Palace. 
For him also there were difficulties. Labour, though dubious, 
might be won. But, despite the alliance with Mr. Law and 
Sir Edward Carson, many solid Conservatives were not en- 
thusiastic; the old Liberal ministers were mostly indisposed 
to serve ; and Mr. Churchill, who was ready to take office, 
provided it were high enough, would have been at this time an 
embarrassment rather than an asset, since he had by no means 
been forgiven by his former Conservative comrades. But at 
the critical moment Mr. Law effected a remarkable stroke of 
business. On leaving Buckingham Palace he called on Mr. 
Balfour, and persuaded him not only to join a Lloyd George 
government but to move from the Admiralty to the Foreign 
Office. The advantages of this arrangement were three-fold. 
All Conservative squeamishness was blown to the winds when 
Mr. Balfour's adhesion was announced. The Admiralty was 
left free for Sir Edward Carson. A statesman worthy to 
follow Sir Edward Grey — indeed one who had been Sir 
Edward's mentor and exemplar — had been found for the 
Foreign Office. 

The way was now clear. On December 7th Mr. George 
met the Labour party, and so skilfully handled his audience 
that a majority, satisfied of the purity of his democratic finish, 
voted in favour of joining the government. Four days later 
it was announced that the "War Cabinet" would consist of 
Mr. George, of Lord Curzon, Lord President of the 
Council, and of two "Ministers without Portfolio," Lord 
Milner and Mr. Arthur Henderson. Mr. Law, as Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, was to lead the House of Commons, and was 
to be also of the War Cabinet, but was "not expected to attend 
regularly." Lord Derby became Secretary of State for War. 
New ministries were created for Food, Labour, Shipping and 
National Service; and the departments were chiefly headed by 
business men, representing railways, textiles, hardware, coal, 
(wholesale and retail) chemicals, newspapers, oil, margarine 
and sugar. These appointments were hailed as a stroke of 



226 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

genius, evidencing a realistic spirit in administration, but few 
of Mr. George's discoveries retained their popularity or busi- 
ness reputation unimpaired after a year or two of office. The 
most notable exception was Lord Rhondda, and even his case 
hardly favoured the theory of a "business government" for as 
Mr. D. A. Thomas, he had shown himself by no means want- 
ing as a politician. 

But the business men were readily comprehensible ; the com- 
position of the War Cabinet was not. A body for which so 
much had been risked, a body which was to wield powers so 
enormous in a manner so absolute, was surely a body worth 
making august. What can only be called the shabbiness of the 
War Cabinet was its chief feature. Was it worth while, some 
of the friendliest critics of the government could not help 
thinking, to overturn every precedent and tradition in order 
that Lord Curzon, Lord Milner, and Mr. Henderson should try 
to think in concert. Mr. Henderson was no doubt regarded as 
a mere "token" member, representing so much Labour support. 
Apart from its chairman, Lord Curzon and Lord Milner were 
the genuine coin of the War Cabinet, and they alone could not 
suffice to create a large impression of wealth. Lord Milner 
with the advantage of that prestige which attaches to failure if 
it is big and consistent enough, had the disadvantage of no 
following in the country and no cabinet experience; Lord 
Curzon, experienced, and in many ways able, was still no 
demi-god, and was handicapped by a temperament which had 
long passed into a proverb. His inclusion may have been de- 
cided with a view to reconciling him to a Lloyd George pre- 
miership. Any other advantages, it might have been imagined, 
would have been attained in a far higher degree by attaching 
to the War Cabinet the great prestige of Mr. Balfour. Of both 
Lord Milner and Lord Curzon Mr. George had spoken in the 
past with even more contempt than hostility. They were now, 
ostensibly, his main reliance in "winning the war." 

But in fact all the circumstances attending the institution of 
the War Council were unfavourable to gravity. Just before 
Christmas the new Prime Minister, meeting the House of 
Commons, declared that "you cannot run a war with a Sanhe- 



NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 227 

drin." "That," he said, "is the meaning of the cabinet of five, 
and one of its members doing- sentry duty outside, manning the 
walls and defending the council chamber against attacks while 
we are trying to do our work inside." This most precious 
image, with its suggestion of a cloud of suspicious characters 
like Mr. Asquith and Mr. McKenna kept at bay only by the 
fixed bayonet of Mr. Law, might seem to confirm the misgiv- 
ings of those who feared that the peculiar eloquence of Mr. 
George was not fitted to the high platform from which a Prime 
Minister must always speak. 

In view of the facts — though they were not then accu- 
rately known — there was also a rather too pious tone in Mr. 
George's apologia concerning his part in bringing down the 
late government: — 

"If in this war I have paid scant heed to the call of party — 
although I have been as strong a party man as any in this 
House — it is because I realised from the moment the Prussian 
cannon hurled death at a peaceable and inoffensive little coun- 
try that a challenge had been sent to civilisation to decide an 
issue higher than party, deeper than party, wider than all 
parties, an issue upon the settlement of which will depend the 
fate of men in this world for generations when existing parties 
will have fallen like dead leaves on the highway." 

Mr. Asquith was clearly no more a fanatic for party than 
Mr. George, and the latter was not charged by his most vehe- 
ment critics with infidelity to party ties. The charge was that 
he had at least connived at propaganda hostile to ministers 
with whom, until the last minute of the eleventh hour, he had 
continued working. It was a charge which could be met in 
only one way, and condoned on only one ground. Mr. George 
could very well say that the thing was justified by urgent na- 
tional necessity; that Mr. Asquith's government had been im- 
possible, that the war would have been lost had it not fallen, 
that its fall could only be compassed by stratagem, and that in 
the circumstances it would have been treason to be too fastidi- 
ous. The country, judging for itself, was quite ready to accept 
that plea, and there was no necessity for Mr. George to advance 
another which savoured of ungenerosity to the defeated. 



228 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

But while certain notes jarring to a sensitive taste were 
struck, the new IVime Minister showed himself competent on 
occasion to speak in those dignified tones which EngHshmen 
look for from the men who wield supreme power. He dealt 
quietly but effectively with the first German peace moves. ^ To 
accept such overtures, he said with admirable succinctness, was 
to place our necks in a noose of which the enemy held the 
string. With a touch of genuine eloquence he called on the 
nation to "proclaim a national Lent." In short, the general 
impression made by the new government was good. People 
were not disposed to consider nicely how Mr. Neville Chamber- 
lain, without resort to "conscription of labour" was going to 
mobilise all the man-and-woman power of Britain and get all 
the round pegs into the round holes. They did not inquire too 
curiously why a wholesale grocer like Lord Devonport must 
necessarily be the best person to control the nation's food, or 
why a ship-owner like Sir Joseph IMaclay must be the ideal 
guardian of the "jugular vein of the nation." Still less were 
they inclined to question the not inconsiderable constitutiotial 
innovation of a "cabinet" to which the Prime Minister could 
apparently appoint anybody he liked, and for which as it after- 
wards appeared, even a non-Briton - was eligible. The public 
as a whole, indeed, seemed to welcome rather than otherwise 
the most conspicuous departures from precedent, and to ap- 
plaud every detail in which the new government differed from 
the old. The general tendency to belittle the retired ministers, 
especially Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey, was fully as 
marked as that to applaud Mr. George, and a little magna- 
nimity on the part of the victors would have been no less safe 
than graceful. 

The public, as usual, was broadly right, if sometimes very 
far off the mark in detail. It is no unjust disparagement to 
the defeated to say that even if the faults of the new adminis- 
tration had been much more serious than they were, the change 
was still a change for the better. The nation at the end of 
1916 was suffering the spiritual analogue of physical fatigue; 

* The notes of December, 1916, to the Pope and President Wilson, 
' General Smuts. 



NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 229 

and the change of government acted like a new dress on the 
spirits of a woman in the vapours, or Hke a brass band on tired 
troops. It simply wanted rousing and there was no man better 
fitted than Mr. George to administer the necessary stimulus. 
His prescription was more expensive than radium, but it was a 
moment when there is nothing so calamitous as uninspired 
prudence, Mr. George's pose that all must be right with the 
world, so long as he remained in his official Heaven, was a piece 
of statesmanship, no less eflfective because it was purely in- 
stinctive. 

In belittling parliament by relegating the leadership to Mr. 
Bonar Law Mr. George was, on the other hand, acting deliber- 
ately and with definite purpose. Like all great demagogues, he 
had ended by resenting the drudgery of convincing the mob, 
whether it be a mob of proletarians or of the well-to-do, and 
it was part of his plan to make the House of Commons of small 
account in the waging of war and making of peace. In this 
he succeeded marvellously ; the House, troublesome to one who 
respected it so profoundly as Mr. Asquith, showed in general 
dog-like submission to him who treated it with studied and 
scarcely veiled contempt. From the first Mr. George's position 
was not that of an old-style Prime Minister, but rather that of 
some South American president who, under the forms of con- 
stitutionalism, exercises the powers of a dictator. There was, 
however, a difference. Such a despot maintains himself mainly 
by means of his hold on the army. In Mr, George's case it 
was literally the fact that the chief obstacle to unmitigated 
autocracy was the opposition of the soldiers. 

For, though practically removed from parliamentary criti- 
cism, though surrounded by docile and dependent ministers, 
Mr. George was still not free to do exactly what he pleased. 
He could set up any likely civilian in a hotel, and tell him to 
"get busy" in matters affecting the liberty, property, health and 
even life of all the civilian population. He could make Orders 
in Council suffice for all sorts of purposes for which explicit 
parliamentary sanction had formerly been deemed essential. 
He could get Indemnity Acts for the asking, should his sub- 
ordinates be found by chance to have carried such methods to 



230 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

excess. In all that broad province of affairs in which the citi- 
zen had been protected, even against the Crown, by the laws of 
England, he had power to bind and unloose. But in his deal- 
ings with the soldiers he was still subject to check. Sir William 
Robertson could hardly be dismissed ; neither could he be per- 
suaded to go on a long foreign mission ; he remained until he 
was actually turned out, a fierce watch-dog in Whitehall. 
However anxious Mr. George might be to make changes in 
strategy and high command, Sir Douglas Haig was surrounded 
by fences more formidable than the ramparts of Montreuil. 
For the public, which would endure anything for victory, was 
remarkably sensitive on this one point of the possible endanger- 
ment of victory by political interference, and the press, how- 
ever enthusiastic for Mr. George, on broad grounds generally 
reflected in this matter the deep-seated apprehensions of the 
nation. 

In the first week of 19 17. however, Mr. George advanced 
certain proposals at an Allied conference in Rome. An at- 
tempt to realise his long cherished desire for an attack through 
Serbia was wrecked on General Cadorna's resolve not to spare 
another Italian soldier for that front. To the alternative pro- 
posal of an attack on Austria through Laibach, Cadorna was 
naturally more S}Tnpathetic, but only on conditions of British 
and French aid on a large scale. Such aid was pronounced 
impracticable by the British and French staffs on the ground 
of transport alone, and for the moment Mr. George found him- 
self in his old position — frustrated by the technical objections 
of the soldier. 

But, just at this moment, as the novelists say, a strange 
thing happened. Till lately a zealot for Eastern operations 
and stubbornly opposed to "feeding the furnace" in France Mr. 
George was suddenly converted to plans for a smashing blow 
on the Western front. This abrupt change of conviction is 
easily explained. He had come under the influence, and suc- 
cumbed to the charm, of General Nivelle, who in the previous 
November had been appointed to succeed Joffre as Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the French Army in France. 



NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 231 

To a man of Mr. George's temperament Nivelle was irre- 
sistible. Trained in the artillery, he could fairly claim to be a 
scientific soldier, but, as a compatriot ^ has written, he was also 
"le type du veritable cavalier." He had superb dash both in 
deed and thought. It was remembered how as a colonel at the 
first Battle of the Aisne, when the infantry was in retreat, 
he took his guns at the gallop into the space between the re- 
tiring troops and the pursuing Germans and saved the situation. 
Later his name was heroically linked with the great deeds of 
Douaumont and Vaux, where the enemy's plan for the capture 
of Verdun fell in ruins. He had now a scheme — a scheme re- 
flecting in every detail his sanguine and daring temper — for 
breaking the enemy's front and exploiting to the full the possi- 
bilities of such a rupture. 

Just after Mr. George became Prime Minister Sir William 
Robertson is said to have reported him as "wanting a victory 
quickly, a victory while you wait." ^ He had mentioned 
Damascus as a place the capture of which would have a good 
efifect on public opinion, but did not think Beersheba would do, 
though Jerusalem probably might. Nivelle now ofifered him 
something far more resounding than any exploit in Biblical 
lands. Nivelle was no military pettifogger, thinking in half- 
inches on the large scale map. There was in his plan no ques- 
tion of a few miles of trench. He proposed to get, with a hop, 
skip, and jump, to Mons and Louvain, Bruges and Ghent, and 
to burst into Germany itself. To Mr. George he was that 
most welcome of all miracles, a scientific soldier without mis- 
givings. The British generals were only talking about the 
need of more men. Petain had gruffly stated that there were 
not enough troops to push operations beyond the enemy's first 
lines. What a refreshment to find one soldier who saw his 
way to ending the war without troubling about "combing 
out" ! Never, since Harpagon embraced Valiere for declaring 
that the true test of a cook is his ability to serve a good dinner 
for very little money, was there such complete accord between 
patron and expert. Mr. George had told Colonel Repington 

* Commandant de Civrieux. 

' Colonel Repington, "The First World War." 



232 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

in February ^ that he was "not prepared to accept the position 
of a butcher's boy driving cattle to the slaughter." Small 
wonder that he conceived the highest admiration for the mili- 
tary talents which promised to spare his humane nature any 
such cruel necessity. He readily convinced himself that 
Nivelle, and Nivelle alone could bring victory in 191 7. But 
to do so the French guns must have supreme command of the 
British army, as well as the French. "Probably," Mr. George 
said to M. Bertier de Sauvigny,- "the prestige which Field 
Marshal Haig enjoys with the English people and army will 
prevent him from being purely and simply subordinated to the 
French command; yet, if the War Cabinet recognises that this 
measure is indispensable it will not hesitate to give Field Mar- 
shal Haig secret instructions to that effect." ^ 

Actually, at the conference held at Calais on February 26th, 
it was agreed that from the date at which operations began, 
and until they terminated, Sir Douglas Haig should carry out 
the orders of the French Commander-in-Chief, and that in the 
meantime (with a right of appeal to the War Cabinet) he 
should conform in his arrangements with Nivelle's views. 
Hindenberg's retreat some days later filled the Field Marshal 
with some doubts, but after another conference he fully ac- 
cepted the position of subordination, merely emphasizing its 
temporary character. 

Unhappily for the project, the French statesmen did not 
share Mr. George's confidence in Nivelle. M. Painleve who 
had applauded Mr. George's enthusiasm for vigour in Mace- 
donia was all for prudence on the Chemin des Dames ; and was 
moreover completely under the influence of Petain, a dour 
infantryman from the Pas-de-Calais, where the phlegm of an 
Englishman like Robertson might be considered subter-normal. 
In Petain's view the Nivelle scheme was as chimerical as it was 
perilous, and the Russian revolution in March, with all that it 
foreshadowed, together with the entry into the war of the 
United States, confirmed him in his preference for a waiting 
policy. Nivelle may have been rash, Mr. George's confidence 

""The First World War." 

"One of the French military attaches in London. 

' Rapport Beranger. 



NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 288 

in him misplaced, but in truth he was never given a chance to 
succeed. He was harrassed from first to last by the Ministry 
of War; in the actual tactics of the battle he was forced to 
accept civilian suggestion ; he was constantly being interrupted 
by summonses to Paris ; subordinate generals were encouraged 
to criticise his orders ; and inevitably disaffection spread 
through the rank-and-file until actual mutiny supervened. 

For Mr. George it must be said that he was loyal, to the end 
and beyond it, to the soldier whose grand designs had captured 
his imagination. At the hastily convened conference at Paris 
on May 4th, when most observers judged that the offensive had 
failed beyond redemption, he asked his French colleagues to 
push it "with all the force of which the two armies are 
capable." He even adopted the argument (curious for him) 
that it was not good for civilians to interfere with soldiers, and 
long afterwards, in 1918, he expressed before the House of 
Commons his unabated faith in the hapless Nivelle. 

It was on the day that Nivelle was relieved of his command 
that Mr. Churchill, at a secret session of the House of Com- 
mons, declared, according to a member^ that the Allies were 
faced with "the greatest danger we had been exposed to since 
the beginning of the war." Mr. George contested this view, 
which, he said, was held neither by Haig nor by the Chief of 
Staff. "Our plans," he said, "are proceeding with the best 
hopes," and he added that "our military leaders feel confident 
that this is the only strategy by which we can win." But on 
May 15th General Petain was appointed to command the 
French forces; for the rest of the year they acted strictly on 
the defensive ; and Sir Douglas Haig, who automatically re- 
covered his liberty, launched in Flanders at the end of the 
summer an attack with limited objective which cost close on a 
quarter of a million casualties. 

There was nothing to relieve the disappointment of a most 
depressing year. The Russian armies, after a gallant attempt 
to combat the effects of a relaxation of discipline, liquefied in 
mutiny and "fraternisation," and the whole organisation of 
the late empire collapsed. The Italians suffered the great dis- 

^ Mr. Walter Roche, "Mr. Lloyd George and the War." 



234 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

aster of Caporetto. The depredations of the submarines, the 
raiding activity of the enemy aircraft, reached an intensity 
never previously known. Every hope which Mr. George had 
entertained a year before was shattered. 

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister successfully resisted the 
pessimism which had oppressed him in far less disquieting cir- 
cumstances in subordinate office. It was not natural that the 
ex-Radical should be delighted with the Russian revolution in 
March, but even at the end of June, when General Alexeieff 
truly described his unhappy country as "tottering on the brink 
of the abyss," Mr. George could say* at Glasgow that the 
"startling events" though temporarily to our disadvantage, 
were permanently for our weal : — 

"Russia is unshackled. Russia is free, and the representa- 
tives of Russia at the Peace Congress will be the representa- 
tives of a free people, fighting for freedom, arranging the fu- 
ture of democracies on the lines of freedom." 

With some pride he recalled how in 191 5 he had said: — 

"Today I see the colour of a new hope beginning to empur- 
ple the sky. The enemy in their victorious march know not 
what they are doing. Let them beware, for they are un- 
shackling Russia. With their monster artillery they are shat- 
tering the rusty bars that fettered the strength of the people of 
Russia. You can see them shaking their powerful limbs free 
from the stifling debris, and preparing for conflict with a new 
spirit." 

A few months later, when the Bolshevists used their victory 
to make peace with Germany, he must have regretted disin- 
terring this prediction. 

Such rhapsodies, however unjustified, were sincere. But at 
the very time he was thus rejoicing with the glee of a young 
Socialist poet, in the unshackling of Russia Mr. George was 
fastening quite competent fetters on his own people. The 
restriction of every kind of Hberty was carried to a point be- 
fore unheard of. Government interference invaded almost 



NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 235 

every department of life. The censorship which had once only 
aimed at the suppression of news was now extended to com- 
ment. At the same time "honours" flowed in a torrent quite 
unprecedented. Tn order to avoid the too flagrant adulteration 
of th^ older companies of chivalry, the new Knights, Dames 
and Companions were shovelled pell-mell into the ad hoc Order 
of the British Empire. But though in all this there was incon- 
sistency, there was certainly no conscious hypocrisy. Possibly 
no human being has ever possessed the equal of Mr. George's 
facility for being without unwholesome strain many different 
things. He can believe himself an enthusiast for freedom, 
while carrying to extremity his passion for authority. The 
creator of a new aristocracy, he can talk equalitarianism with 
complete conviction. With a quite exceptional liking for rich 
men who are little more than rich, he never feels the irony of 
his oft-repeated glorification of the "cottage-bred man." Dur- 
ing his premiership and before, his choice of friends and com- 
rades would have suggested, in any other, mere cynicism. Yet 
Mr. George is never cynical. It is merely that he possesses 
the strangest capacity for dividing his life, his mind, and his 
very soul into water-tight compartments. He has real affini- 
ties with the men who believe in democracy, the ultimate ex- 
cellence of human nature, and the simple religious ideals of 
the Welsh hills. But that does not prevent him from discerning 
the gold of human worth which for less delicate perceptions lies 
hidden beneath large accumulations of plutocratic coarseness 
and materialism. His various sets of intimates never meet, 
and it is intended that they shall never meet. As in his boy- 
hood, so in his political prime, one friend, or company of 
friends, saw just one side of Mr. George, and no more. To no 
human being, probably, has it been vouchsafed to grasp him in 
every dimension. A political Einstein may go to the length of 
a tolerable working theory, but experimental verification, is out 
of the question. 

It occasionally happens, however, that an individual catches 
some fleeting glimpse of another aspect of Mr. George be- 
sides the one with which he is familiar, and the shock is then 
sometimes sufficient to shatter a lengthy friendship. Such a 



236 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

glimpse not alone ended the official connection, but clouded the 
personal relations, between the Prime Minister and a member 
of the first \\'ar Cabinet, ]\Ir. Arthur Henderson, whom an 
embassy to revolutionary^ Russia had converted from a sound 
trade unionist into a less dependable authority on European 
aflFairs, favoured the project of a Socialistic conference at 
Stockholm, despite the ominous eagerness of the "Kaiser's 
Socialists'' in Germany. 

The British and French governments both decided to refuse 
passports to delegates, and in the circumstances it could not 
be a matter of complaint on Mr. Henderson's part that his 
colleagues should desire his resignation. But the manner of 
his dismissal was certainly such as to justify some resentment. 
Arriving punctually for a cabinet meeting to which he had 
been summoned, Mr. Henderson was stopped at the door and 
told to wait. For a whole hour he waited, as he put it, "on the 
door mat," his temporary substitute, Mr. Barnes, being sent 
out to explain that all this was for his own good. It is 
impossible to imagine the circumstances in which the welfare 
of such a minister as Lord Curzon would have considered in 
precisely the same manner. So thought Mr. Henderson, and 
others with him, and from this moment dated a certain rest- 
lessness in Labour. What might have been regarded as only 
an incident of the game rankled as a class insult. 

Mr. Barnes took Mr. Henderson's place in the W'ar Cabinet, 
which had been enlarged during the Summer by the addition 
of Sir Edward Carson and General Smuts. Other changes 
had been made in the government. The faithful Dr. Addison, 
being in trouble with Labour over "dilution,'' was relieved of 
the Ministry of Munitions, and sent to the Ministry of Recon- 
struction, there to build castles in Spain — poor enough prac- 
tice for his future task of building cottages in England. Mr. 
Churchill had succeeded him; the speech in which he had lifted 
the corner of the veil over "I'aflFaire Nivelle" had determined 
Mr, George to risk some Conservative resentment over the 
official re-flotation of one described (by an enemy) as the 
"unsinkable politician." At a moment when the prospects of 
the government appeared most overcast Mr, Montagu entered 



NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 237 

it, as Secretary of State for India, declaring himself "the only 
rat who had ever joined a sinking ship." Sir Eric Geddes, to 
the satisfaction of most people, perhaps not excluding the mili- 
tary authorities in France, was made First Lord of the Admir- 
alty, where he was soon to compass the ejection of Lord Jelli- 
coe from the high command at sea. 

For many months in 19 17 there was little beyond these 
minor incidents of politics to stir public feeling. The French 
failure was not fully apprehended. To balance the Russian 
collapse there was the accession of America to the cause of the 
Allies, and though there was disappointment, there was little 
of the pessimism which had reigned a year before. But 
towards the Autumn the public awakened to the fact that there 
was no satisfaction, except as regarded the heroism of the 
troops, to be drawn from the fearfully expensive fighting on 
the Flanders ridges ; and the breaking of the Italian front at 
Caporetto, followed by a disastrous retreat to the Piave, came 
with a shock the more violent from the sedulous care with 
which anodynes had been administered. 

Italy, it seemed, was about to share the fate of Serbia and 
Rumania. There was, then, no magic in the new War Cabi- 
net to avert disasters such as had dogged the old Sanhedrin. 
The state of the public mind suggested the imminence of a 
new political upheaval. But Mr. George was roused. He 
made up his mind that still another Ally must not perish be- 
cause it was nobody's business to save her; secured the assent 
of the War Cabinet to the constitution of a neyv central 
authority for the direction of the war ; and armed therewith, 
went straightway to the Allied conference at Rapallo. Imme- 
diate help was provided for the sore pressed Italians as a 
matter of course, but it was in addition agreed to establish a 
Political Council of the Allies, to meet monthly at Versailles, 
and a Military Council to remain in permanent session. The 
object of these arrangements was to avoid a repetition of 
catastrophes due to the feeling, as Mr. George said later in 
the House of Commons, that the Italian front was "not our 
business." Lack oi co-operation had led to the downfall of 



238 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Serbia in 191 5 and of Rumania in 19 16. It had at least con- 
tributed to the downfall of Russia. In 19 17 it had come ter- 
ribly near to ending Italy's partnership in the war. It must, 
Mr. George resolved, now end. 

On the military council Generals Foch, Wilson and Cadorna 
were to represent their respective countries. It was a move 
towards that unity of command in which Mr. George had 
never lost faith, rightly judging that the experiment under 
Nivelle had not been given its fair chance. But there was 
acute military discontent and once more the Prime Minister 
was driven to temporise. The X^ersailles Council was at last 
conceded only advisory powers, and as an assurance that even 
these should not be too powerfully exercised Foch was with- 
drawn and Weygand, a soldier of ability but no outstanding 
reputation, was put in his place. 

IMeanwhile, Mr. George, stopping at Paris on his return 
from Rapallo, delivered the most sharply criticised of his war 
speeches. For the first time since he had become Prime Min- 
ister he spoke with some alarm and with a most distinct note 
of bitterness. The fault, he said, was not with our armies. 
*Tt has been entirely due to the absence of real unity in the 
war direction of the Allied countries. . . . We have never 
passed from rhetoric to reality, from speech to strateg)\" He 
bitterly satirised the conception that it was "Russia's pidgin" 
to do this and "Italy's pidgin" to do that ! . . . 

"The business of Russia is to look after her own front. It 
is the concern of Italy to look after her own front. Am I my 
brother's keeper? Disastrous! Fatal! The Italian front is 
just as important to France and Britain as it was to Germany. 
Germany understood that in time. Unfortunately we did not." 

And then, with "brutal frankness" he spoke of our boasted 
victories — "when we advance a kilometre into the enemy's 
lines, snatch a small shattered village out of his cruel grip, 
capture a few hundreds of his soldiers, we shout with un- 
feigned joy." 

The main contentions were only too true, and probably the 
time had come to speak without sparing. There were of 



NO. 10 DOWNING STREET 239 

course holes to be picked in the speech. It was wild incon- 
sistency, after Mr. George's enthusiasm for the Nivelle offen- 
sive, to talk about the "futility" or "hammering" on the 
Western front. Not all British and Allied victories had been 
so Pyrrhic as was suggested. The Eastern designs to which 
the orator seemed to be reverting were, perhaps, chimerical. 
But the main thesis of the speech was sound enough. The 
Kaiser had said to King Constantine "I shall beat them, for 
they have no unity of command." But before there could be 
unity of command a great barrier of pride and prejudice, 
national and professional, had to be overborne. The Paris 
speech, despite its exaggerations and possible touch of unfair- 
ness, was salutary in removing the first dam. 

Little more than a week after the Paris speech Sir Julian 
Byng's success at Cambrai set the bells ringing, and Mr. 
George's words were momentarily forgotten. But Cambrai 
was only a brilliant flash in the winter of discontent, and the 
darkness which succeeded the failure to improve it was the 
more oppressive for a momentary illumination. In the House 
of Commons Mr. Asquith, consciously or unconsciously, speak- 
ing for the soldiers, had called in question the Rapallo policy, 
and criticised the Paris speech. "If that speech was wrong," 
retorted Mr. George, "I cannot plead any impulse. I cannot 
plead that it was something I spoke in the heat of the moment." 

This refusal to withdraw one jot or tittle made its impres- 
sion on the public, and helped to render easier on a day as 
dark as any in British war history, that step which, .humanly 
speaking, was the salvation of the Allies. For his devotion, 
in the face of extraordinary difficulties, to the ideal of a unified 
command Mr. George is entitled to even more credit than he 
has justly received for his part in the "affair of the shells." 



CHAPTER XVII 

UNITY OF COMMAND 

IVyT ALICE itself has never been tempted to the absurdity 
^^^ of impugning Mr. George's courage. During the war he 
had all sorts of dealings with all sorts of men concerning every 
variety of matter. Some of these men were consistently sus- 
picious or hostile; others, after enjoying a close and flattering 
intimacy, retired with all the bitterness of love to hatred turned. 
It has been at various times the Prime Minister's business to 
call for the resignation of great soldiers and sailors, to dismiss 
political colleagues, to ordain the reversal of much cherished 
policies ; and in many cases the circumstances have been such 
as to explain, if not to excuse, feelings of resentment. 

A formidable list of shed intimacies might be compiled. 
Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Carson, Dr. Addison and Mr. Mon- 
tagu have all left Mr. George with a deep sense of grievance. 
Lord Robert Cecil, who himself "gave notice," has gone to the 
length of declaring that the ideal ruler of Britain would be a 
statesman differing in every possible particular, in defects as 
well as qualities^ from the gifted statesman he once served. 
Sir Henry Wilson, who owed to the Prime Minister's dis- 
crimination his rise to highest military office, has jeered at his 
pretensions to strategic inspiration. Sir William Robertson 
has contributed to the exegesis observations of characteristic 
bluntness. In short, every variety of criticism which could be 
suggested by want of liking or want of trust has been levelled 
at the Prime Minister. He has been called ignorant, reckless, 
faithless, shallow, sloppy, inconsistent, unbusinesslike, prodigal. 
But nobody has suggested that he is wanting in pluck. 

Some, indeed, have accused him of lacking that kind of 
courage which should rather be distinguished as constancy. 

* Speech at Hitchen, May, 1922. 

240 



UNITY OF COMMAND 241 

None, at their bitterest, have gone further. Those who saw 
much of Mr. George during the most critical period of the war 
declare that his spirit never rose higher than when some great 
blow had descended on the Allies. He might incline to a 
surface pessimism when, in the view of most others, things 
were going quite moderately well. But when the whole fabric 
of the Alliance seemed on the point of dissolving in ruin, when 
the most calm and resolute observers were disposed to despair, 
his confidence seemed to be as much increased as his energy 
was stimulated. From time to time he thought it necessary to 
dwell, at the cabinet and on the platform, on the dangers of 
actual defeat. But the notion of an inconclusive peace never 
invaded his mind ; while any hope of victory remained, the fight 
for victory must go on. And if all hope should vanish, he once 
said to a colleague, there could be nothing for him but a plunge 
off Westminster Bridge. He had burned all his boats. 

This spirit in the head of the government was of enormous 
value at all times. It created the legend in every government 
department that nothing mattered but victory, and if this spirit 
led on the one hand to much careless spending it destroyed on 
the other that respect for persons which is generally a weakness 
in British administration. Things were not left undone simply 
because they might offend a great man, or a powerful interest. 
li the interest were too powerful, compromise might be neces- 
sary; but there was little awe of mere high-and-mightiness. H 
to plough up the park of a rich Radical threatened to involve 
a political schism the rich Radical's park was spared. But 
no such consideration was accorded to a duke who was only 
a duke; his deer were small deer indeed, li competence could 
not be insured, vigour and decision were certainly encouraged, 
when any director and controller could believe that he would 
almost certainly be supported if he happened to go wrong, and 
quite possibly if he happened to go right. But while the spirit 
of the Prime Minister had vast indirect influence always and 
everywhere, it was above all at times of crisis that his almost 
gay confidence in face of disaster produced its most valuable 
effects. There were moments when his speeches were quite 



242 ]MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

literally victories, and when they actually did something to 
redress misfortunes in the field. 

But, though there can be no doubt of Mr. George's courage, 
there is need of discrimination in appraising its varying quali- 
ties. He was no political Nelson. He was never afraid of 
the enemy. He was never afraid of the forces of use-and-wont. 
He might have occasional concern, but never fear, for the 
House of Commons. But he was sometimes sufficiently afraid 
of a clever individual politician to placate him at a certain cost, 
and he was often sufficiently afraid of the people to humour it 
to its own ultimate disadvantage. The man who was never 
known to blench in face of the most frightful military catas- 
trophe — though one catastrophe w^as to come which, though it 
only cleared his head, struck cold to his very heart — could often 
be reduced to ners'^ousness by a by-election, a speech of calcu- 
lated malice, or a newspaper paragraph. 

These splendours and these limitations were equally illus- 
trated by the events of the last year of hostilities. Mr. George 
was certainly at his highest, perhaps he was not far from his 
weakest, during the interval between the Paris speech and the 
general election of 1918. 

The aim of the Paris speech was certainly not to create de- 
spondency. H it showed a genuine note of alarm, it betrayed 
no trace of panic or incertitude. Yet its immediate effect was, 
by exciting a wide misgiving, to rouse to new activity all the 
forces adverse to w'hat was called the policy of the "knockout 
blow." The vast bulk of the nation was for holding out to the 
end, whatever might betide. A small minority was for cutting 
losses and getting the best tenns possible. A much larger 
minority, with no love for Prussianism, saw still greater dan- 
gers in the national impoverishment which must ensue if the 
war were to be indefinitely protracted. The rise of Bolshevism 
in Russia, the rise of the income tax in Britain, had given their 
thoughts a new direction, or rather given new emphasis to 
thoughts always present. 

To this last class belonged the Marquess of Lansdowne. His 
letter to the Daily Telegraph asserting that "some of our origi- 
nal desiderata have probably become unattainable," was doubt- 



UNITY OF COMMAND 243 

less not intended as a manifesto in favour of peace without 
victory, but it was at once accepted as such by the Radical- 
Sociahst faction which favoured immediate negotiation with 
an unbeaten enemy. Lord Lansdowne was promptly named 
by the chief organ of this body of opinion as the head of an 
alternative Government. However fantastic the notion of such 
a combination, Lord Lansdowne could not be altogether ig- 
nored. He had led the Unionist party in the House of Lords. 
He had been Foreign Secretary when the Entente was nego- 
tiated. He had served in the first Coalition government. Un- 
challenged, his letter, following as it did on the Paris speech, 
might readily have suggested to the world, as well as to the 
nation, that the government was taking indirect steps, through 
an unattached politician of great eminence, to find how far a 
policy of despair might appeal to the British people. 

An "authoritative" statement was therefore put forth ex- 
plaining that Lord Lansdowne spoke for himself alone, and 
Mr. George followed this up by a speech to the benchers of 
Gray's Inn, the calm and dignified tone of which left nothing 
to be desired : — 

"The danger" (he said) "is not the extreme pacifist. I am 
not afraid of him. But I warn the nation to watch the man 
who thinks there is a half-way house between victory and 
defeat. . . . Victory is an essential condition for the security 
of a free world. All the same, intensely as I realise that, if I 
thought things would get no better the longer you fought, not 
merely would there be no object in prolonging the war, but to 
do so would be infamous. ... It is because I am firmly con- 
vinced that despite some untoward events, despite discouraging 
appearances, we are making steady progress towards the goal 
we set in front of us in 1914, that I would regard peace over- 
tures to Prussia, at the very moment when the Prussian military 
spirit is drunk with boast fulness, as a betrayal of the great trust 
with which my colleagues and I have been charged." 

The Brest-Litovsk Treaty, proving that Germany had no in- 
tention of making an idealistic peace merely because the dele- 
gates of an enemy nation repeated the formula of "no indem- 



244 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

nities and no annexations," destroyed what chance the Lans- 
downe movement may have had. Nevertheless Mr. George was 
obliged to consider two things. There was the new associate, 
the United States, with a President most sensitive regarding 
"imperialistic aims." There was Labour, somewhat morose 
over the Stockholm conference incident, disturbed by the grow- 
ing food shortage, irritated still more by the defective ration- 
ing arrangements which Lord Rhondda was labouring hard (at 
a fatal cost to his health) to put right, and restive under the 
tightening control of the new bureaucracy. Some clear state- 
ment of "war aims" seemed necessary. M. Clemenceau had 
defined France's aims as "victory," and in France that was 
sufficiently illuminative. In England, and still more in 
America, some further detail was required; and the Prime 
Minister took advantage of a meeting of Trade Union delegates 
in Westminster to set forth the objects of the Allies. 

There was to be complete restoration of the independence of 
Belgium, and such reparation as was possible for the devasta- 
tion of its towns and provinces. There was to be restoration 
of Serbia. Montenegro, and the occupied parts of France, Italy, 
and Rumania, with "reparation for the injustice done." There 
was to be "re-consideration of the great wrong of 1871," that 
is, the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany. An independ- 
ent Poland, comprising "all genuinely Polish elements who 
desire to form part of it," was declared an urgent necessity for 
the stability of Western Europe. "Genuine self-government 
on true democratic principles" must be secured to the Austro- 
Hungarian nationalities who had long desired it : and the 
"legitimate claims" of the Austrian Italians for "union with 
those of their own race and tongue" must be satisfied. The 
same conditions were laid down for the Rumanian Irredenta. 
The German colonies must be held at the disposal of a confer- 
ence "whose decision must have primar}' regard to the wishes 
and interests of the native inhabitants." As regarded Turkey, 
the Dardanelles must be internationalised; Arabia, Armenia, 
etc. must be given recognition of their "separate national con- 
ditions," but we were not fighting to "deprive Turkey of its 
capital or of the rich and renowned lands of Thrace," any 



UNITY OF COMMAND 245 

more than for the "break-up of the German peoples or the dis- 
integration of their State" or for the "destruction" of Austria- 
Hungary. Nor was our policy to be regarded as "an attempt 
to shift the cost of warlike operations from one belligerent to 
another, which may or may not be defensible." Finally, "a 
great attempt must be made to establish by some international 
organisation an alternative to war." 

This declaration had been framed by Mr. George after con- 
sultation with the Labour leaders, and with Mr. Asquith and 
Viscount Grey. Its composite authorship, together with the 
fact that it was written with an eye to American opinion, 
accounts for almost every clause being capable of more than 
one construction. "Reconsideration" of the Alsace-Lorraine 
question, for example, might mean anything or nothing; the 
whole problem of Austria was really left open ; the references 
to indemnities were as vague as well might be. It could 
hardly be expected that the terms would be seriously considered 
by Germany, then preparing her final great effort for victory. 
But the tone of the declaration was appreciated at Washington, 
and it was not unskilfully designed to break the back of the 
peace agitation at home. Even Mr. Philip Snowden was im- 
pelled to vouchsafe a limited commendation. 

One danger — that of serious internal dissensions — had been 
averted at the beginning of 191 8. One advantage — the cordial 
co-operation of the United States — had been secured. But 
serious difficulty was threatened in another quarter. Towards 
the end of 191 7 the French had felt obliged to ask the 
British authorities to take over a further portion of their 
line. Sir William Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig both 
emphasised the difficulties, in view of the depleted rifle strength 
of the British Army, but M. Clemenceau was pressing, and 
as Mr. George has said, he was "not an easy gentleman to 
resist." The matter was referred to the Versailles Council, 
which recommended that an additional twenty-eight miles of 
front should be allotted to the British army. Always dis- 
tasteful to the General Staff, the Council was now more hateful 
than ever, and feelings were exasperated by the announcement. 



246 MR. LLOYD GEOKGE 

on Febniary 4. that its functions had been "enlarged.'' On 
the 1 2th Mr. Asquith raised the whole subject in the House 
of Conunons. The functions of the Council, he said, hail been 
advisory ; now. presumably, they were executive. What exactly 
did that mean? Mr. George was diplomatically reticent. Mr. 
Asquith. he said, was asking for "information which any in- 
telligence officer on the other side would gladly pay large sums 
of money to get." The only definite information he would 
vouchsafe was that whatever decision had been made concern- 
ing the Committee's powers had been made with the approval 
of Sir Douglas Haig and Sir William Robertson. 

Five days later it was aimounced through the Press Bureau 
that the latter had resigned. Sir William at once rejoined, 
through unofficial channels, that he had done nothing of the 
sort. He had been virtually dismissed. Utterly incapable of 
adapting himself to the Versailles policy, he had been given 
the choice of two posts. He could remain at the W'ar Office, 
shorn of those special powers Mr. George had grudged him 
when Secretary of State for War. or he could take the place 
of British representative at Versailles on the council of which 
he disapproved. Both offers were declined — it was clearly 
impossible that either could have been accepted — and Sir 
William left Whitehall for the humdrum obscurity of the 
Eastern Command. There had of course to be explanations 
in Parliament. But the true explanation was like so many 
things in the Latin poets. It was "understood." The simple 
fact was that Mr. George was determined, by some means, to 
get real unity of command, and that Sir William, tempera- 
mentally unfitted to co-operate intimately with foreigners, 
was while he remained an insuperable obstacle. 

The business had an incidental interest in that it revealed 
Mr. George's ancient confidant. Colonel Reping^on."* as a 
bitter antagonist. Colonel Repington made "revelations." was 
prosecuted, and fined ; and as a sequel a singular alliance — or 
at least understanding — subsisted for some while between the 
leading exponent of the extreme military party and the chief 
prophet of the Pacificists. 

' Who had left The Tinus for the Morning Post. 



UNITY OF COMMAND 247 

Sir William Robertson's disappearance caused little ripple 
on the current of general opinion. Respected as honest and 
able, he possessed no hold on the public imagination, and the 
country, which had been flooded with the blunt opinions of 
privates and second lieutenants concerning the events after 
Cambrai, was not in a mood to think of a unified command 
as either a disaster or a humiliation. Sir William was suc- 
ceeded at the War Office by Sir Henry Wilson, the one British 
general who, as much by his conversational gifts as by his 
quite real ability, had altogether taken Mr. George's fancy. 
Sir Henry Rawlinson went to Versailles. Foch joined the 
Council as soon as its powers were enlarged. A very long step 
had now been taken towards the realisation of Mr. George's 
ideals. For Wilson and Foch were more than colleagues; 
they were friends who thoroughly understood each other, and 
Wilson even understood to some degree Frenchmen in general. 

The consummation of plans so long revolved and so patiently 
advanced, in face of the most formidable difficulties, was near ; 
but events were soon to show how much had been jeopardised 
by the necessity Mr. George was under to advance by short 
stages. On March 21 the Germans launched their offensive, 
and General Cough's army suffered the severest reverse that 
had befallen the British arms. The situation was temporarily 
saved by the stubborn resistance of Byng's forces on the 
left and by the extraordinary speed with which French troops 
were thrown into the gaps on the right. But it was clear that 
the situation was one of the deadliest danger, and that, unless 
the best use were made of the respite, the Allies had to con- 
template no less a disaster than the separation of the British 
and French armies and their defeat in detail. 

The courage of Mr. George was never more finely illustrated. 
For perhaps the first time the chill of real terror entered his 
soul. Those who were about him knew how appalling was 
the weight of anxiety he sustained. He could apprehend the 
present danger as he probably did not grasp that of the "retreat 
from Mons." Then it might well seem to the non-military 
mind that, if all were for the moment lost, all could still be 
recovered in the long run. But the armies now in jeopardy 



248 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Avere the last armies of France and Britain : nothing: could 
retrieve a defeat such as threatened. But. whatever his niis- 
g^vinsrs. he did not permit them for a moment to palsy his 
energy-, or even to abate his cheerfulness in public. Rather 
he was braced by the cold shock of the emergency to some- 
thing above his usual level. He spoke in the tones best cal- 
culated to steady and inspire the nation. He acted with a 
consistent strength and decision worthy of a great man in the 
very crisis of his country's fate. He no longer hesitated to 
''interfere" even in detail. A feeling existed at Headquarters 
that Gough's misfortune was so clearly a misfortune that it 
would be unjust to relieve him of his command. At another 
time Mr. George with the press in his mind, might have 
acquiesced ; he had done so before. Now he stood resolutelv 
by the view of commonsense that no claims, no merits, no 
virtues, no record, no glamour of military fame, could com- 
pensate for the mere fact of such a misfortune. The safety 
of the armies was the highest good, and all private kindness, 
all personal respect, must give way to a brutal but sincere 
logic. 

But a much larg-er question than that of an army com- 
mand nnist. Mr. George firmly decided, be resolved at once 
with sole reference to the same considerations. The time had 
come when no arginnents, however pc>werful, must weigh 
against the supreme necessity of the single command. 

On the J4th Lord Milner was sent to France with plenary 
powers and full instructions, and two days later took place the 
famous conference at DouUens. It was quite a small affair 
— Lord Milner. Balliol culture and sua^^ty covering something 
harder and more dogmatic than is usual in the English ; Haig. 
calmly handsome, a model of military deportment ; Clemenceau. 
inscrutable in even*- line of his Mongolian features : Foch, 
showing how it is possible to be short and stately; Wilson 
(unhappily fated to fall, with his honours thick upon him, 
by an assassin's hand) how playfulness may go with a 
giant's inches: a few deputies and soldiers as make-weights, 
the question of a generalissimo was at once raised. Sir 
Douglas Haig declared that, if Foch would consent to give 



UNITY OF COMMAND 249 

his advice, he would be very glad to follow it. The time for 
"advice," however, had passed. "That is not what we are 
talking about," retorted Clemenceau, with a face of iron. The 
old French statesman took Lord Milner aside; after a rapid 
interchange of views the English statesman spoke a word 
apart to the Scottish marshal ; and then Clemenceau sat down 
to draft the document which, after a little more discussion, 
took the following form : — 

"General Foch is charged by the British and French Gov- 
ernments to co-ordinate the action of the Allied armies on the 
Western front. He will make arrangements to that effect 
with the two Commanders-in-Chief, who are requested to fur- 
nish him with all the necessary information." 

So simply was the great business at last transacted. Nat- 
urally enough there was little elation mingling with the British 
correctitude. Equally of course the French showed themselves 
frankly pleased. As the Conference was breaking up, a French 
Minister laughingly remarked to Foch, "You have your papers 
now. General." "Yes," replied Foch, grimly, "and a pretty 
time to give them to me." 

It will probably be the verdict of history that Mr. George's 
part in placing the Allied armies under the control of one man 
— and that a great military genius — constitutes his highest 
claim on the gratitude of the British people, while his superior- 
ity to all pettifogging notions about national dignity should 
give him an indefeasible title, whatever differences of view 
on other questions, to the respect and regard of the French. 
No less admirable than the constancy with which Mr. George 
clung to his conviction was the courage with which he made 
use of every opportunity to give it effect. 

For it was no light risk he was undertaking. He had to 
deal with a people exceptionally sensitive in such matters, a 
people capable of high curiosity, but prone also to low and 
irrational suspicion, a people with no recent experiences of 
great alliances, and with old memories of alliances in which 



250 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

their part was that of paymasters and dictators of policy. He 
had to take count also as a military tradition precisely re- 
flecting this chivalrous but aloof and disdainful character. 
In peace time the nation had ahvays been disposed to back 
the army against the politician, and it was not alone that Mr. 
George must fear, if he pressed too hard or too soon, an 
explosion of military discontent which, adroitly used by a 
section of the press, might have blown him in an instant from 
power. Even though a French generalissimo had been quietly 
accepted by the soldiers, the circumstances may be easily con- 
ceived in which the arrangement would have roused fury in 
the people. Whenever it should be necessary to impose a heavy 
and bloody task on British troops the murmur would have 
gone round that British blood was cheap to a Frenchman, and 
that this was both a safe and a profitable revenge for Water- 
loo. The same sort of things were said about Dutch com- 
manders of British troops in the seventeenth century ; and 
even in this war the great sacrifices of the French had not 
altogether ensured them against occasional suggestions that 
an undue weight was being selfishly and callously imposed on 
the British Ally. 

In view, therefore, of the gfreat dangers attaching to a 
premature attempt to realise unity of command. Mr. George 
is not to be blamed because the calamity of March Ji was not 
averted or mitigated by an earlier appointment of the great 
soldier whom he and Clemenceau had come to recognise as 
the only possible counterpoise to the talents and energies of 
Ludendorff, The hostility of the military party, fears that it 
might be supported by public opinion, obliged the Prime Min- 
ister to work with caution and concealment, while never weak- 
ening in his conviction, or in his resolve ultimately to translate 
his ideals into fact. The Versailles Council had first to be 
established. Then its authority had unostentatiously to be 
increased. In Whitehall Wilson had to be substituted for 
Robertson. All these things were done cleverly and without 
mishap. But even so it required a reverse threatening the 
loss of all to enable the British and French Prime Ministers 
to complete the work they had in mind. Foch was only given 



UNITY OF COMMAND 251 

his "papers" when there was a quite considerable probabihty 
that even he could do nothing with them. 

Happily, however, things had not gone too far, and the ap- 
pointment was almost immediately justified by its effects. 
Petain's reserves were thrown into the breach before Amiens, 
and the German advance on Paris was checked, while in the 
following month, when the Germans broke our line on the 
Lys, liaig had not only his own reserves to use, but French 
reinforcements were sent as readily as though the danger had 
been in Champagne or the Vosges. At Montreuil, though the 
new situation was accepted with loyalty, it was certainly not 
regarded with enthusiasm; no diplomacy could efface the im- 
pression that a slight on British generalship had been cast 
with the approval of a British prime minister. But in the 
ranks there was little disposition to lament the change. The 
ordinary "temporary" soldier had no professional prejudices, 
and from personal observation of many small facts he had 
acquired a certain respect for French methods. 

At home also, a great part of the public, influenced by the 
reports of returning soldiers, or stunned into acquiescence by 
a sense of the awful character of the emergency, was in no 
sense critical. There was, however, a carefully concerted 
attack on the Prime Minister which merits notice chiefly be- 
cause it led to the virtual elimination of the Liberal party 
as an independent political force. The question was raised 
whether General Gough had not been made a scapegoat. The 
Prime Ministers of Great Britain and France, backed by their 
creature, the Versailles Council, were, it was argued, the 
parties really responsible for the disaster of March 21, They 
had forced Haig to extend his line without giving him the 
requisite reinforcements; on Gough was imposed an impos- 
sible task ; and that he had not accomplished it merely proved 
that he was no magician. Why should the unfortunate gen- 
eral, the owner of a peculiarly revered name, be relieved of 
his command while those who had condemned him in advance 
to failure were free from all censure, and even acted as his 
self-righteous judges? 

As so often happens Mr. George presented to those critics 



252 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

a case unassailable in the main, but vulnerable in detail. It 
was natural that the French, after their losses in 191 7. should 
be unable to hold as much of the front as in the past. Great 
Britain was the only Power which could supply the deficiency, 
and Mr. Georji^e would have been unfaithful to every great 
interest in his charge if, after the report of the Versailles 
Council, he had refused the French request. On the other 
hand there is little doubt that Gough was asked to face a sit- 
uation of extraordinary difficulty and danger with unduly 
slender resources. Whether he would have been equal to 
it with any resources, or whether he made absolutely the best 
use of the resources actually to his hand, were, obviously, 
questions for discussion by the expert alone. The only point 
which Mr. George's political critics could properly make was 
that he had not provided to the utmost extent possible in 
the circumstances for an emergency which could be foreseen, 
and was in fact foreseen. 

For the German blow was not a surprise. Mr. George 
afterwards quoted Sir Henry Wilson as declaring, in January 
191 8, that the Germans were about to concentrate all their 
resources opposite the British line with a view to severing 
the British and French armies. Time and spot were indicated 
with extraordinary accuracy, and Mr. George did not err in 
describing the prediction as "one of the most remarkable in 
the history of military strategy.'' Yet as late as March 7th, 
only a fortnight before the great blow fell, Mr. Law, a mem- 
ber of the War Cabinet, could own himself "still a little 
sceptical" about the threatened offensive, and could state that 
if it came the enemy would have no "dangerous superiority" 
on the Western front. 

In August 1918, Mr. George, speaking in the House of 
Commons concerning Gough's defeat, dwelt with justifiable 
pride on the energy with which reinforcements were pushed 
into France after this reverse. "Before the battle was over," 
he said, "in a fortnight's time, 268,000 men were thrown across 
the Channel — one of the most remarkable efforts of British 
shipping, of organisation of British transport, and, let us 
say, of the War Office. In a month's time 355,000 men had 



UNITY OF COMMAND 258 

been thrown across the Channel." Why, it will at once be 
asked — and the question was the basis of all criticism on the 
subject — were not some of these men sent before, and not 
after, the anticipated German blow? Did Mr. George neglect 
the prediction of Sir Henry Wilson which he afterwards 
eulogised as showing such extraordinary judgment? Or was 
he husbanding troops for some enterprise apart from the 
Western Front at a time when the initiative had clearly passed 
to the enemy ?^ Either explanation is possible; Mr. George 
may well have been as wrong on other military questions as 
he was supremely right on that of an undivided command; 
there must always be danger, as there may sometimes be 
advantage, in civilian ascendancy in military councils. 

But a third explanation is at least equally plausible. After 
the shock of March 21st raw boys and men of medically low 
category were hurried to the front without protest from the 
public. Six weeks previous energy taking such a form might 
have provoked a popular storm. The possibility was not such 
as to be weighed seriously in the balance against an adequate 
insurance of the Western front. Sniping annoyances might 
be feared, but no such convulsion as would alone have justi- 
fied the acceptance of a certain military risk as a lesser evil. 
Events proved that the influence of all the possibly hostile 
forces was trivial, and that the heart of the country was thor- 
oughly sound. But it is just in regard to such matters that 
the Welsh courage of Mr. George, often so fine in its dash, 
is apt to falter. His schemes and stratagems, his waitings on 
events, the curvilinear character of his progress towards an 
appointed end were sometimes, as in the matter of. unity of 
command, justified by necessity. But it was not always so. 
More often they are to be explained by the simple fact that he 
is a democrat who sometimes has to trust the people, but would 
much rather not. 

The discontents of the military party, and the manoeuvres 
of the politicians who used it, or were by it used, came to a 

*This is the suggestion of Colonel Repington, "The First World War." 



254 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

head in May, when what is known as the Maurice debate 
stereotyped political divisions. General Maurice, who had been 
Director of Military Operations, had charged the Prime Min- 
ister with misleading the country and the House of Commons 
with regard to the strength of the British Army in France 
on the eve of the German attack. Unfortunately for himself 
and his followers Mr. Asquith, taking a serious view of these 
allegations, decided to move for a select committee to inquire 
into them. Mr. Law, the leader of the House, at first prom- 
ised inquiry by two judges acting as a "court of honour" 
but this rather absurd proposal was withdrawn, and on second 
thoughts it was decided to treat the matter as one of confidence. 
The ensuing debate showed that Mr. Asquith had been ill 
advised and worse instructed. It is true that the Prime 
Minister's defence of the figures he had previously given to 
the House was by no means completely satisfying. He had 
said that our army in France was "stronger" at the beginning 
of 1918 than at the beginning of 1917 ; it appeared that he had 
merely meant "more numerous," since the actual rifle strength 
was less. He had talked of the small number of white di- 
visions employed in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine, but 
it appeared that there were many white troops on the ration 
strength of the coloured divisions. He had talked of two 
divisions withdrawn from Salonika, the inference being drawn 
that they had returned to France, whereas in fact they had 
been sent to another theatre of operations in the East. Never- 
theless the Prime Minister had no difficulty in winning the 
sympathy of the House and the country. When he complained 
that he had been "drenched by cocoa slops" ; when he asked 
solemnly, as a man charged with almost crushing burdens, 
that there should be "an end to sniping," a conclusion to these 
"distracting, paralysing, rending" controversies while fate 
was in the balance, the general commonsense applauded. It 
was felt that, however important may be a correct rendering of 
the accounts of a fire brigade, the appropriate moment for 
cross-examining the chief fireman is not when he is putting 
out a fire. And when Mr. George argued that the real lesson 
to be drawn from the controversy about extending the British 



UNITY OF COMMAND 255 

line was "the importance of unity of command" he spoke the 
simple truth. Haig and Petain had been on good enough 
terms, but naturally each was anxious over his special charge, 
and there was bound to be occasional trouble until Foch had 
in black and white his authority to "co-ordinate the action of 
the Allied armies." 

The effect of the Maurice debate was an immense and last- 
ing increase in the strength of the government. The feeble- 
ness of the parliamentary opposition was fully exposed, and 
— what was still more important — it was henceforth handi- 
capped by a suspicion, of which it could not complain (for 
its own imprudence was at fault), but which it did not entirely 
deserve. It would be unjust to charge against Mr. Asquith 
anything worse than a strange blindness. Some of the forces 
to which he unwillingly lent his aid and the respectability of 
his name, were in truth sinister, and their success would have 
gravely endangered that close Anglo-French co-operation on 
which the fate of civilisation depended. Mr. Asquith acted, 
no doubt, merely out of the enthusiasm of a political purist 
maintaining the rights of the House of Commons to full and 
accurate information. But in doing so he did in fact ally 
himself with an attempt to destroy the government at a mo- 
ment appallingly critical. The full extent of his penalty was 
only apparent seven months later when the Liberal party was 
almost exterminated. The Maurice debate decided in advance 
the verdict of the general election. 

Meanwhile, on the morrow of the Somme Battle, Mr. George 
had introduced a new Conscription Bill raising the age for 
military service and extending compulsion to Ireland, Its 
results were neither great nor, on the whole, beneficial. Some 
of the older men brought into the army may have proved 
useful behind the lines, but, except in the trenches, there was 
no deficiency of man-power, Irish conscription brought no 
men to the colours; it possibly deprived the army of a few 
volunteers, and by completing the ruin of the friendly Na- 
tionalist party, it certainly contributed more than anything 
to give political mastery in Southern Ireland to the hostile 



256 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Sinn Fein faction. Of more effect was the "combing-out" 
of industries, to which the emergency gave a sudden impetus. 
Fifty thousand men were taken from the coal mines alone. ^ 
The largeness of the figure suggests once again the Prime 
Minister's dislike in such matters of moving much in advance 
of public opinion. With much of the temper of an autocrat, 
and a strong relish ever for the ostentation of power, he 
united something of the caution of those French tyrants who, 
while decimating the nobility, were timorous of anything that 
hit the people. Often he might be described as a dictator who 
left necessity to dictate. 

Such being his tendencies, it is the more to his credit that 
after the March offensive he acted not only with vigour, but 
with consistent disregard of the kind of risk he was most 
prone to refuse. If he had neglected to order enough petrol 
in the ordinary course for the military machine, he at least 
lost no time, and shirked no risk, in knocking up everybody 
in the middle of the night for an emergency supply. Thus 
it required real boldness to ring the bell of the American 
garage, and much tact to prefer the necessary demand. As 
Mr. George put it at Edinburgh, the war had become, for the 
time being, a "race between General Hindenburg and Presi- 
dent Wilson." So far it had been an accepted principle of 
Anglo-French diplomacy that America must on no account be 
hustled; all dangers were to be preferred to that of offending 
the susceptibilities of the new Associate. The emergency 
of the "Kaiser's Battle" made such delicacy absurd; men 
threatened with death have at least one advantage — they can 
be frank even to their best friends. Mr. George at once decided 
to speak frankly to the United States. 

By a happy chance Mr. Baker, the American Secretary for 
War, was in London, and the Prime Minister, with Mr. Bal- 
four, waited on him with an urgent representation that the 
combatant strength of the American forces in France should 
be forthwith placed in the line. The Americans were not 
ready to fight as an army. The concession of the British 

* The Prime Minister's statement in the House of Commons. 



UNITY OF COMMAND 257 

request meant, therefore, that they must be split up, and that 
their battahons must be brigaded with the AlHes. The sacri- 
fice of national pride involved was even greater than that which 
had made so difficult the appointment of a generalissimo and 
with a people so sensitive as the Americans the danger of 
offending her susceptibilities was by no means negligible. It 
is to the honour of President Wilson that he at once took the 
risk, and to the glory of the American people that they accepted 
and applauded his decision. But too much credit can hardly 
be given to Mr. George that he had even dared to ask. 

With equal wisdom and courage he accepted the not in- 
considerable hazard of using all available British shipping 
to transport American troops still at home to France. "I 
shall never forget that morning," he has said,^ "when I sent a 
cable to President Wilson telling him what the facts were, and 
how essential it was that we should get American help at the 
speediest possible rate, inviting him to send 120,000 infantry 
and machine-gunners per month to Europe; if he did this 
we would do our best to help carry them. President Wilson 
replied 'Send your ships across, and we will send the 120,000 
men.' Then I invited Sir Joseph Maclay, the Shipping Con- 
troller, to Downing Street and said 'Send every ship you can.' 
They were all engaged in essential trades, because we were 
cut down right to the bone. There was nothing which was 
not essential. We said 'This is the time for taking risks.' We 
ran risks with our food and we ran risks with essential raw 
materials. We said 'The thing to do is to get the men across 
at all hazards.' America sent 1,900,000 men across and out 
of that number 1,100,000 were carried by the British mer- 
cantile marine." 

We have here a good example of the very real virtues of 
Mr. George's war control — virtues which compensated for (as 
indeed they alone made possible) the persistence of much 
incidental inefficiency and extravagance. The abandonment of 
cabinet responsibility, the latitude given to subordinates not 
always well chosen, was bound to result in much caprice, and 
there were times when Mr. George's administration was very 
* Speech in Leeds, December 7, 1918. 



2oS MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

iiiiich like that of Harnn al Raschid, in that the most innocent 
things suddenly became crimes, and "one-eyed calenders" 
were abruptly elevated to positions of influence. But it had 
also the virtues of its defects. It might be wasteful, slovenly, 
inconsecutive, cursed with those special vices which were 
indicated in the perpetual call for "co-ordination." But it had 
also vision, vigour, high courage. 

In short, it reflected most faithfully the character of its 
chief. Both qualities and defects are traceable to the peculiar- 
ities which make Mr. George the supreme example of the 
political impressionist. Or perhaps one should rather say 
that he is one of those artists who, while they filled whole 
galleries with gigantesque school pictures, have left no perfect 
work of their own. "Dutch finish" is not his line; he more 
resembles that Italian miracle who was called "La fa presto" 
from the amazing celerity with which he turned out canvases 
on which others would have worked for years. He conceives 
his duty done when he has supplied the enormous outlines 
of a design; the filling up is left to subordinates. No man 
understands better — few men have abused more — the art of 
leaving a labourer's work for a labourer's hand. Mr. George 
can concentrate into a couple of days the effort necessary to 
devise and start a political machine; once it is set going his 
interest ceases until it goes spectacularly wrong. 

Not that he idles ; he is ready for, he hungers for, another 
problem, and under his system there is never any lack of prob- 
lems. For it is a system which can only work perfectly with 
perfect instruments, gifted with genius almost equal to 
his own, and with so little ambition that they will always 
remain content to be instruments. Such a combination is 
rare, and despite Mr. George's nose for ability (and even 
silent ability) his instruments are generally not distinguished 
for judgment. Half his time as chief director of the war 
was thus necessarily spent in clearing up messes caused partly 
by defects in design and partly by the faulty execution of 
imperfectly understood instructions. Even his talent and 
force of character could never suffice to impart to his admin- 
istration the strength and unity of a combination of able 



UNITY OF COMMAND 259 

men, not creatures but colleagues, who are inspired but not 
enslaved by one superior mind. This is only to say that Mr. 
George's peculiar form of autocracy could not escape the 
characteristic defects of autocracy in general. But every form 
of autocracy has some special advantages, and this form was 
no exception. Mr. George's faculties were unequal — as any 
one set of faculties must be — :to the task of seeing after every 
aspect of a transaction so enormous; and circumstances (in 
which his own disposition, jealous of any competing splendours, 
must be included) decreed that most of those entrusted with 
the details of administration should be men of rather light 
equipment. The singular nature of the administration, how- 
ever — the very want of strong individuality in its members, 
the very fact of their intellectual and moral subjection to the 
Prime Minister — was of advantage in a great emergency. 
Once the Prime Minister had recognised that a thing must be 
done, he had only to give his orders, and it was done. This 
was the one superiority of the Cabal over the Sanhedrin, 
But it could be, on occasion, decisive. 

Under Mr. Asquith's regime this question of the shipping 
for American troops would have been debated from every 
point of view. The shipping experts would have proclaimed 
it impossible ; the naval experts would have stated all sorts 
of eloquent objections ; the military experts would have con- 
demned it as meaning no leave, the food experts as meaning 
no bread, the business experts as meaning no trade, the finance 
experts as meaning no revenue. After weeks of disputation 
on these lines Mr. Wilson would have been offered a quarter 
of the shipping he wanted, and meanwhile the Germans might 
well have got their decision. Mr. George arranged the affair 
in a few minutes, took all the responsibility on his own 
shoulders and merely ordered his subordinates to do their part. 

In thus dealing with the United States, frankly and without 
regard to the commonplaces of international etiquette, Mr. 
George had on his side the newly confirmed doctrine of unity 
of which Foch was the symbol. Since British pride had been 
subordinated to the common cause he could, with consistency 



260 MR. LLOYD CiKORGE 

and Avithout ofFetice. ask that an even more sensitive people 
shonkl consent to an even more trying submission. 

The American sacrifice, Hke our own, was richly rewarded. 
From that time, though there were still checks to our arms, 
though the Allies were once again to be pushed back to the 
Marne, teiuleiicies never ceased to improve. If Mr, George 
had done nothing else, the gratitude of all free peoj^les would 
still be due to him for forging, even so late, the only possible 
key to victory. So far as the unity of command was his work 
— and it would have been cpiite unattainable without his per- 
sistent etYort — he can be honestly acclaimed as the British 
Carnot, the organiser of the Allies' victory. 

Yet all his elTorts might have miscarrieil but for the happy 
accident that the man for the work was there, and that he was 
a man wlu\ knowing his work to admiration would brook no 
outside tampering with it. It has been saitl that Foch imposed 
two conditions before he consented to take command. One was 
that his luncheon hour should be respected. The other was 
that his plans must be absolutely his own. He knew something 
of the evils of any division of authority in war. Unity of 
command had proved no panacea when there was a Nivelle at 
one end of the telephone and a Painleve at the other. Rut 
Foch, once those "papers" were in his pocket, was a polite 
Sphinx, and Clemenceau, who had laboured to get the papers 
for him, would neither interfere nor permit interference. Dur- 
ing these last months, when the German etTort was dodged, 
checked, exhausted and thially broken in irretrievable ruin, 
Foch directed all, Clemenceau actually performed the services 
Mr. Law was supposed to render to the British W'ar Cabinet — 
he kept otT the flies. Mr. George wisely confined himself to 
giving the great emprise his distant benediction. 

From the early Summer to the late Autumn of 1918 he 
disappears from the centre of the picture. His war work was 
nearly done when Lord Milner, acting as his deputy, handed 
over the fortunes of the Allies to the greatest of modern 
soldiers. It was quite finished when, having defeated faction 
at home, he ensured the speedy and effective help of the Amer- 



1 



UNITY OF COMMAND 261 

ican troops. Wc have no hint of him as a strategist durinj^ the 
Summer of 191 8. What Robertson had said with the utmost 
possible hluntness a greater than Robertson had never to put 
into words. Mr. George was perfectly aware that he harl been 
relieved of his command, knew also that it had passed to one 
who not only could but must be trusted. 

Even in the diplomatic exchanges which preceded the Ger- 
man collapse Mr. George has little part ; it is President Wilson 
who cross-examines Prince Max of Baden, and sets forth 
the Allies' requirements and aspirations; what it is necessary 
for Great Britain to add is mostly said by Mr. Balfour. Mean- 
while Mr. George has been "scanning the horizon" at Man- 
chester, and finds "flashes on the sky which indicate that there 
are grave atmospheric disturbances in the social and economic 
world" — in view of which he proposes more social reform, 
for we "cannot maintain an A ' Empire on a C '' popula- 
tion," We must have "better houses, more education, higher 
wages, fully cultivated land, skilled essential industries." In 
short, Mr. George foresees the end of one kind of war and 
is looking forward to the beginning of another. In his bed 
at the Manchester Town Hall — where he is laid up for some 
days with a chill — he spends "sixteen hours out of every 
twenty-four" in reading all sorts of printed matter from state 
papers to novels. But it would be strange indeed if the most 
thrilling masterpiece of Mr. Oppenheim did not sometimes 
drop from his hand as he reflected that the parliament of 1910 
had lasted nearly eight years, that it must in decency be 
soon dissolved, that there was an enormous new electorate 
of women and men as ignorant as women to be educated, 
and that the coming of i>eace might bring reactions fatal to 
the political combination to which he owed his influence. 
The main lines of the political campaign which was to pro- 
long the life of the War-made Coalition were no doubt decided 
long before the last shot was fired in France. 

Mr. George reappears on the military stage when the terms 
of the armistice are being discussed in Paris. On the eve of 
his departure from London he had debated the question with 



2&2 ]MK. LLOYD GKORGE 

Sir Douglas Haii^, who was gloomy as to the state of his 
artny ; utiloss it cmiUl bo restored to strength the war. he 
held. eoiiUl tun he continued. At a military eonteretiee at 
Senlis, indeed, llaig had suggested the greatest moileration, 
believing as he did that the Tiermans in a military sense were 
yet unbroken. The British commander wouUl have been sat- 
isfied, it would seem, with the evacuatioji of France. Helgium 
and Alsace-Lorraine, ami the restitution of French and Belgian 
rolling-stock. It is. therefore, a scarcely buoyant rrime 
Minister who arrives on French soil. Rut when he hears 
Foch declare his own stringent terms, which would tleprive 
Ludendortf of any hope of "resumption of hivstilities on our 
borders." Mr. George passes from one extreme to the other. 
Assured by Foch's contidence that victory is indeed won, he 
questions whether the conditions are suflicientlv severe, is 
attracted by the American general's notion of leaving the 
Gennans "only their eyes to weep with," and argues for com- 
plete demobilisation and disarmament. 

^larshal Foch. standing between llaig on the one hand and 
Mr. George and General Pershing on the other, calmly indi- 
cates the practical difficulties. Complete demobilisation implies 
the complete occupation of Germany. Will the statesmen pro- 
vide him with the necessary troops? Finally he declares that 
the acceptance of his own terms is quite sufficient — "Our aims 
are accomplished; none has the right to shed another drop of 
blood." 

Mr. George, thus brought to earth, accepts readily enough 
the cool wisdom of the great soldier. He has had his fore- 
taste of the truth that even victory has its limitations, that 
making peace is scarcely a simpler business than making war. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE DAWN OF PEACE 

/^N the evening of the last day of perhaps the most wonder- 
^^ ful week in the history of civihsed mankind, Mr. George 
was guest of the Lord Mayor of London at the Guildhall. He 
had just returned from Versailles, where he had spent "a great 
week." In the beautiful forests, he said, "the leaves were 
falling, but these were not alone. Empires and Kingdoms 
and Kings and Crowns were falling like withered leaves before 
a gale." The contrast between the Spring and the Fall of the 
leaf was, he declared, the most dramatic in history. In the 
Spring the enemy was everywhere triumphant; now we had 
seen "the Turkish Armies annihilated by a combination of 
brilliant strategy, dash, valour, and organisation; Bulgaria 
occupied from the mountains to the sea, its treacherous king a 
fugitive; Austria, then entrenched on Italian soil, shattered, 
broken ; Germany, the last and greatest of our foes, has through 
dauntless heroism and gifted leadership been hurled back, and 
an army which was once the most formidable of the world 
is hardly an army at all. Its navy is certainly no longer a 
navy." 

The Kaiser and Crown Prince had abdicated and fled; 
"they arc gone ; let that suffice. Their own people have con- 
demned them, and I wish to add no word to that condemnation." 

As to the German people it must not be forgotten that they 
cheered their rulers, and would have cheered them to-day if 
they had won. We sought no yard of "real German soil"; 
we were not going to commit the folly of 1871 ; but the reck- 
oning must be stern; we had no intention of interfering with 
the freedom of the German people, but we intended to secure 
beyond doubt the freedom of our own. "We shall do no 
wrong; we will abandon no right." 

263 



264 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

So far Mr. George spoke with a loftiness worthy of his 
great argument. But even at that moment, despite the real 
awe he doubtless shared with the commonest men concerning 
the apocalyptic drama which he described, he was unable to 
omit a chuckle of personal triumph. He had referred to the 
"props" of Germany which had been successively knocked 
from under her, 

"Forgive me for referring to the side-shows," he said. "I 
have waited for this hour. I have been supposed to have been 
advocating little side-shows which frittered away the strength 
of this country upon unhelpful enterprises. You know now 
why. We wanted to get round by the back door to Germany. 
It helped those who were battering at the front door." 

Forty-eight hours later London was deliriously celebrating 
the signature of the armistice. The Prime Minister, who had 
given his blessing to its noisy rejoicing, himself showed a finer 
sense of the fitness of things. He spent the evening with his 
wife and daughter at a Cymanfa Ganu, or singing festival, at 
the Westminster Chapel, where he exercised his admirable voice 
in the rendering of hymns fitted to the occasion. 

These three facts — or rather what they indicate — may be 
borne in mind with advantage in the story of the peace-making. 
There is in Mr. George an instinct of high statesmanship which 
seldom fails, when he is genuinely interested in a question, to 
discern the course of true wisdom. There is a sense of respon- 
sibility to something higher than "public opinion" which, 
though it lacks the authority of a firmly dogmatic creed, is still 
most powerful on occasion, and is never wholly without influ- 
ence on his actions. But there is also something not easy to 
define which is seldom found in a very great man. It is not 
merely egotism; many great egotists have little or nothing of 
this peculiarity. It is not a mere vulgar craving for applause ; 
Mr. George's intelligence is quite strong enough to recognise 
that his failing must often weaken the applause which is best 
worth having. But whatever it may be called, it is a funda- 
mental part of his character, and can never be ignored. It is 
sometimes a strength, in that it prevents him ever being embar- 
rassed by his own past. It is sometimes a weakness, affecting 



THE DAWN OF PEACE 265 

his judgment of facts. But, strength or weakness, Mr. George's 
foible of infallibihty is always unhealthy. No man was ever 
the better for believing himself always right; every man is 
distinctly the worse for claiming to be always right. The 
dogma of Georgian infallibility, unfavourable to virility in 
those of its professors who happen to be Mr. George's fol- 
lowers, has had unhappy reactions on Mr. George himself. In 
order to appear always right, he has often found it necessary 
to show that somebody else is wrong; and nothing is so august 
— whether it be a man or a nation or a principle — that it can- 
not be made to serve as a scapegoat. Who can point to a 
single instance in which Mr. George has said, quite simply, "I 
was wrong, and for my error I alone am responsible." He 
has sometimes admitted the failure of a particular scheme, and 
even, as in the case of the land taxes, he has joined heartily in 
the laugh against himself. But there is always the implication 
that there would have been no failure but for the fault of those 
who impeded, or over-ruled, or inadequately supported. A 
king can do no wrong because in theory he can do nothing. 
Mr. George, a king who does everything, has too uniformly 
claimed the privilege of diverting all blame from himself to 
his agents or collaborators. This characteristic, which is not 
incompatible with much generosity and with a genuine desire 
to stand by a colleague in trouble, has always to be remem- 
bered, and is especially the secret of much that followed the 
armistice. 

During the war Mr. George had definitely ceased to be a 
party politician, and any of the specialised dexterities attach- 
ing to that character which he might occasionally display could 
be always, and generally with justice, explained by his intense 
desire to save his country, and his intense conviction that the 
country could only be saved by himself. In the late autumn 
of 1 91 8, however, the politician reappears, and we are hence- 
forth not at liberty to consider the Prime Minister in the char- 
acter of The Statesman as Hero. It is occasionally our less 
pleasing task to contemplate his qualities as the Genius as Elec- 
tioneer. The manifesto which purports to embody a policy can 



266 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

no longer be accepted at precisely its face value; it must be 
scrutinised as an election address. The erect attitude appropri- 
ate to the restorer of a shattered world is modified by a certain 
stooping of the head inseparable from the business of vote- 
catching. 

Mr. George cannot be blamed for wanting a new parliament. 
The old House of Commons had existed since 1910; it was 
quite out of touch with the country; its life had been pro- 
longed again and again by measures exercised by necessity, but 
dangerous as precedents; and it was out of the question that 
there should be a further indefinite extension of its existence. 
A new parliament was wanted, if only to ensure the Peace, and 
a new parliament genuinely representing the nation would have 
been of enormous value. The last thing Mr. George wanted, 
however, was a House of Commons reflecting with reasonable 
accuracy the views of the people on things in general. What 
he wanted was a House of Commons reflecting the country's 
views on one subject only — himself. In the opinion of nine 
people out of ten he had, whatever might be the truth about this 
detail or that deserved well of his country, and with the greater 
part of this vast majority that was sufficient reason for giving 
him a new lease of power. The only election address needed 
was "With great effort we ministers have achieved victory; 
empower us to attack the scarcely less difficult task of achieving 
peace." The poeple would have done the rest in their own 
way — a much better way than they were forced to take. 

But, acting on perhaps the least happy inspiration of his later 
life, Mr. George deliberately set about the elimination of all 
that could be called an opposition, all that could act as a check 
on the government, all that could provide an alternative admin- 
istration. His mind was set on stereotyping that political com- 
bination which had permitted of his personal ascendancy. So 
far he had owed an authority unparalleled since the days of 
Cromwell to a purely temporary sentiment — to the feeling that 
the war must be won, and that he was the statesman most 
likely to win the war. But now the war was at an end; the 
frost of terror which had made so many strange places passable 
had given out; to-morrow there might be a rapid thaw, and 



THE DAWN OF PEACE 267 

mere quagmire where tfiere was now solid ground. Mr. 
George decided in favour of a freezing-mixture of his own, 
and invented the formula that the Coalition which had won 
the war was necessary, not only to "win the peace," but to 
create a new Britain. The war alliance of parties must not 
only be continued until the Peace Conference had concluded 
its labours — a quite reasonable plea. It must be made perma- 
nent. Every domestic question must henceforth be approached 
in the same spirit of unity that facilitated the making of war. 
In 1 91 5 everybody wanted shells, and shells were got; there 
would have been no shells had the getting of them been made 
the subject of an "organised quarrel." But were shells more 
important than a richer, happier, healthier, more productive 
Britain? 

What Mr. George would not or could not see was that 
there was no common term between the problems of war and 
those of peace. Given the desire to win a war, every type of 
intelligence must come to much the same conclusion about the 
desirability of having good ammunition, and plenty of it, for 
the use of an army. But there must be infinite variation of 
view as to whether it is better national policy to grow corn 
than to feed cattle; whether revenue shall be raised by direct 
or by indirect taxation; whether houses shall be built by the 
State or whether their construction shall be left entirely to the 
working law of supply and demand; whether Irish or Indian 
agitators shall be treated to a "whifif of grapeshot" or to a dose 
of "constitutional reform." In all political matters there are 
infinite gradations between the unqualified affirmative and the 
blunt negative ; and a "Coalition" between extremes does not 
mean steady progress along a fixed line representing a medium 
view. It simply means deadlock if the balance of forces is 
perfect; otherwise it means (more or less) imbecility. 

Nevertheless Mr. George, with his genius for "building fly- 
ing bridges between incompatibles," had no difficulty in making 
out a plausible case. He did so by the very simple method of 
assuming — what the general public is quite willing to assume — 
that there is no kind of sincerity in the war of political parties; 
With charming frankness — since the confession was not a 



268 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

serious men culpa — he represented himself as the converted 
sinner. The time had been when he, as a party man, played 
fantastic party tricks, against his better judgment, before high 
Heaven. But that was when things were less serious ; now he 
had learned wisdom, and had no patience with mere "organised 
fault-finding." 

Eliminate opposition — such was his argument — and all is 
possible in the way of reform and reconstruction. Fail to elim- 
inate opposition, and the chance of reform and reconstruction 
will perish in a barren quarrel over non-essentials. At West- 
minster on November i6th Mr. George enlarged on the ad- 
vantages of government by experts carrying out a policy rep- 
resenting the greatest measure of agreement that could be 
reached as between the two parties — Labour had now virtually 
withdrawn — in the Coalition. Thus the Unionists were to have 
preference on tea and coffee, but there were to be no food taxes. 
Thus Irish "aspirations" were to be satisfied, but the veto of 
Ulster was apparently to remain. On "social reform" the 
Prime Minister's inspiration seemed to be accepted by his 
Conservative colleagues. Thus at Wolverhampton, on Novem- 
ber 23rd we find Mr. George proclaiming that Britain must be 
made "a fit country for heroes to live in" ; that the slums must 
go ; that the land must be cultivated to its full capacity ; that a 
systematic effort must be made to bring back the population 
to the countryside ; that ex-soldiers and sailors must be settled 
on the land ; that for transport the State must "make itself re- 
sponsible"; that "inhuman conditions and wretchedness must 
surrender like the German Fleet." 

In brief the government committed itself to a system which, 
whether or not it could be called Socialism, was certainly pa- 
ternalism of the most pronounced kind. No doubt some of 
the highly respectable Tories among Mr. George's colleagues 
were a little bewildered. Mr. Walter Long,^ for example, 
dwelt on the difficulty of getting a large new population on the 
land when "most of the good land was already occupied." 
Others, again, no doubt acquiesced with mental reservations. 
These things might look well in an election programme, but 
* Afterwards Lord Long of Wraxhall. 



THE DAWN OF PEACE 269 

was there any necessity to carry them out? It would really 
seem that, in fear of "Bolshevism" — "there were revolutionary 
elements," said Mr. George, "making for anarchy" — die chiefs 
of the Conservative party did in the main, and for the moment, 
accept Mr. George's remedy as a dismal necessity of the situa- 
tion. Individualism was renounced; the State was pledged 
to all kinds of interference with trade and industry. Mr. 
Churchill, without repudiation, made statements which could 
only suggest an intention to nationalise the railways, and such 
a declaration was in perfect accord with the tone of the govern- 
ment's considered manifestoes. 

But it was soon found that remote Utopias interested the 
country less than the pressing question — what was to be done 
with Germany? President Wilson, in his telegraphic ex- 
changes with Prince Max of Baden, had indicated willingness 
for a peace on the conditions laid down in his Fourteen Points 
and various other pronouncements — a peace with "no annexa- 
tions, no contributions, no punitive damages" ; a peace in which 
every territorial settlement should be "made in the interest and 
for the benefit of the populations concerned," and not as a part 
of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims among rival 
states; "no special or separate interest of any single nation or 
group of nations to be made the basis of any settlement which 
is not consistent with the common interest of all" ; "no leagues 
or alliances or special covenants and understandings within the 
general and common family of the League of Nations" ; and 
so forth. On the other hand the "wrong done to France by 
Prussia in 1871" must be righted, and a free Poland consti- 
tuted with access to the sea. It was stipulated also' that Ger- 
many should "restore all invaded territory." 

These terms were referred to the Allied Governments by the 
President, and an important addition was made to the effect 
that compensation must be made by Germany "for all dam- 
age done to the civilian population of the Allies and to their 
property by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea, and 
from the air." The terms as amended were accepted by Ger- 
many, and the armistice was arranged on this general basis. 
The apparent limitation of damage was at once challenged in 



270 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

England; it was pointed out, in at least one quarter,^ that the 
"damage" done to "civilians and their property" by a five or six 
shilling income tax during many years was a much more im- 
portant item than the ships and cargoes sunk by enemy sub- 
marines or the houses blown up by enemy aeroplanes. Never- 
theless Mr. George concurred in the terms stated, without any 
endeavour to enlarge them so as to include the more serious 
losses due to the war. 

As to the other terms, if interpreted in one spirit, they per- 
mitted the Allies to make re-arrangements in the map of Eu- 
rope, sufficient to give security against any German menace in 
future, which would have inflicted no intolerable hardship on 
any particular population; if interpreted in another spirit, they 
would of course have absolved Germany from any substan- 
tial penalty, and put her in a position of absolute advantage 
certainly over France, and probably over all the victorious 
Powers. 

It will be seen that the Allies were in advance estopped (ac- 
cepting the "damage" clause on the face value of its wording) 
from claiming any part of the actual cost of the war; they were 
much less definitely embarrassed, despite the declarations of 
Mr, George and President Wilson, in the modes of securing 
the good behaviour of the Prussianised Empire by steps less 
harsh indeed than, but similar in kind to, those which were 
actually taken to remove the menace of the Hapsburg mon- 
archy. But on the face of things it appeared that the author 
of the war, the author of so tnany foul deeds in the war, was 
likely to come oflf not only better than her unfortunate Allies, 
but certainly not worse than some of the victors. 

British opinion was deeply moved, and by a far less ignoble 
impulse than certain writers would have us believe. The 
eighteenth chapter of the Book of Revelations affords a curi- 
ously exact picture of what happened when it was proclaimed 
"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen." The multitude really 
felt that Babylon's sins had "reached unto heaven," and that 
God had "remembered her iniquities" ; and its disposition was 
to concur in the justice that would "reward her even as she re- 
' The Evening Standard. 



THE DAWN OF PEACE 271 

warded you and double unto her according to her works; in 
the cup which she hath filled full to her double." But there were 
"kings of the earth" who lamented for her when they saw "the 
smoke of her burning." There were "merchants of the earth" 
who began to wonder whether it were well to be too hard on 
the good customer that had been and the better customer that 
might still be. Merchants are in truth in a terrible position 
when "no man buyeth their merchandise any more." It would 
not be exact to say that "every ship-master, and all the com- 
pany in ship, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea" cast 
dust on their heads and cried in modern equivalents : "Alas, 
alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships 
in the sea by reason of her costliness." For the moment the 
sailors and ship-masters at least were scarcely disposed to 
mourn a most cruel enemy. But it is broadly true that the 
interests took automatically a different view from the popu- 
lace. While to the common man Babylon was merely a hateful 
thing cast down there were very powerful people whose main 
desire was to wax rich once more, if not through "the abun- 
dance of her delicacies," at least through the preservation of 
her industrial capacities. 

Such men welcomed a declaration made by Lord Milner some 
little time before the Armistice. He had remarked that it would 
be a "serious mistake" to imagine the German people were in 
love with militarism and had insisted, with great emphasis, on 
the necessity of maintaining "stable German government." 
The fear of German Bolshevism had put all fear of a revived 
Prussian imperialism out of Lord Milner's mind. No other 
Minister pursued quite this line of argument, but the emphasis 
laid on the "perfect fairness" of the contemplated peace, to- 
gether with the refusal of an important member of the Gov- 
ernment "to state in public what line a British delegate is 
going to take in regard to any particular question," ^ led to a 
vague uneasiness. "There is too much suspicion," said The 
Times, "of influences concerned to let the Germans off lightly." 
"Suspicion" was too definite a description of the feeling which 
found noisy expression at every meeting. The public merely 
*Mr. Bonar Law, Glasgow, November 24th. 



272 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

wanted to impress a statesman known to be rather specially 
sensitive to atmosphere with the fact that it did not consider' 
the German case one for chivalry. 

Ministers, however, were rather absurdly responsive to the 
popular mood. Indeed, their invertebracy on the question of 
"making Germany pay" and "hanging the Kaiser" was only 
part of their general fear lest anything should endanger their 
return in triumph. History has surely no parallel to the unnec- 
essary prodigality of promises at this election. Mr. George for 
some time declined to be bound, but, at last, at Bristol on De- 
cember nth he definitely bent his head to a storm which was 
after all little more formidable than stage thunder and light- 
ning. 

"Who (he asked) *is to foot the bill? ... By the jurispru- 
dence of any civilised country in any lawsuit the loser pays. It 
is not a question of vengeance; it is a question of justice. . . . 
There is another reason why Germany should pay the bill, apart 
from the general principles of equity. The war has cost her 
less than it has cost us. . . . It is absolutely indefensible that 
a person who is in the wrong should pay less than the person 
who was declared to be in the right and who has won. ... I 
have always said we will exact the last penny we can out of 
Germany up to the limit of her capacity, but I am not going 
to mislead the public on the question of her capacity until I 
know more about it, and I am not going to do it in order to 
win votes. . . . With regard to the Kaiser there is absolutely 
no doubt that he has committed a crime against national right. 
There is absolutely no doubt that he ought to be held respon- 
sible for it. As far as the European Allies are concerned, and I 
hope America will take the same view, there is no doubt at all 
as to the demand which will be put forward on the part of the 
European Allies to make the Kaiser and his accomplices re- 
sponsible for this terrible crime." 

When the votes were counted it was at once apparent that 
the Government might have dispensed with its elaborate 
"coupon" precautions and its profuse pledges. The election 
with its sweeping majorities for the Coalition was a great per- 



THE DAWN OF PEACE 273 

sonal triumph for Mr. George, and 'the fate which overtook 
every prominent Liberal who had voted against the govern- 
ment over the Maurice affair had a significance not to be 
ignored. In fact, so far as the immediate issue was concerned, 
there could be, coupon or no coupon, only one verdict on the 
part of the nation. On the one side was the great fact that 
the government had been strong enough to win the war, and 
must be made strong enough to make the peace. On the other 
side there was, properly, nothing, not even a negative. Mr. 
Asquith's followers could not say that they did not want a 
strong peace; they did not dare to define a "clean" peace in a 
sense opposed to the popular feeling of the moment. Their 
defeat, indeed, was almost as inglorious as it was complete, 
and many sought to curry favour by laudations of the Prime 
Minister, and promises of a general support of his policy, at 
the very moment that they were appealing for votes against him. 

The Labour party was almost equally at a disadvantage. 
The minority which was suspected of an anti-national attitude 
fell before the full fury of popular sentiment. The patriotic 
majority might suspect the sincerity of the government's social 
reform programme, but it could not consistently denounce meas- 
ures so frequently put forward from Socialist platforms. 
Thus no British party could offer a reasonable opposition, and 
even Ireland could only oppose two negatives — Ulster saying 
"No" to any form of Home Rule, and Sinn Fein to any form 
of Union. The women voters, who may in future greatly 
modify the conventional "swing of the pendulum," in this case 
only added their sum of more to that which had too much. 
In some ways more clear-sighted, and certainly more objectively 
minded, than the average of the other sex, they are even more 
prone to hero-worship, and here there was only one obvious 
hero. It was not true that Mr. George had "won the war." 
The Unknown Warrior, supplied by the Unknown Worker, and 
paid for by the Unknown Citizen, did that. But in the centre 
of the lighted stage there was but one figure to catch the eye, 
and the general election of 191 8 was merely the recognition of 
that fact. 

The election has been denounced as an act of political im- 



274 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

morality. It was not wicked, but it was injudicious, and it is 
strange that so clever a man as Mr. George should have been 
blind to the disadvantages of too big battalions. He could 
hardly have appealed to the electors to return unpopular candi- 
dates, but it would have been good policy on all grounds to 
make their return as little difficult as the circumstances al- 
lowed. As things were the steps taken to secure a great ma- 
jority, and the exaggerated success which attended them, proved 
a great embarrassment. The pledges concerning the peace- 
making were not in themselves very important. Germany was 
to pay "up to the limit of her capacity." The Kaiser and the 
"war criminals" were to be brought to trial. But Germany's 
capacity might mean anything, and the Kaiser was in the posi- 
tion of the famous hare; he had first to be caught. In this 
regard the Prime Minister's hands were really remarkably 
free. His real trouble was his immense and strangely monoto- 
nous following. It was not merely that the great majority ot 
the candidates returned belonged to one political party. More 
important was the fact that they represented only two or three 
simple types. There were vast numbers of rather second-rate 
business men, no doubt shrewd enough in their proper 
activities, but exceedingly narrow in their conceptions of 
politics. There were rows and rows of the least engaging 
representatives of suburban Conservatism. There were, 
though in rather less force than ordinarily, the solid 
country gentlemen, the railway directors, the brewers 
and the financial magnates. But the "coupon" system seemed 
to have been fatal to distinction. Even the lawyers who came 
back seemed to be the least sprightly of their class, and the 
general impression of the new House of Commons was that 
though it contained much narrow shrewdness it was excep- 
tionally deficient in intellect or political sense. On the other 
hand it was probably the richest House of Commons ever 
elected. 

Such a Chamber was a most unlikely instrument of "social 
reform." But while scornful of the "country fit for heroes" 
schemes, except perhaps as a temporary ruse to side-track Bol- 
shevism, the Coalition majority was, according to its lights, 



THE DAWN OF PEACE 275 

eminently patriotic. It was quite in earnest as to "making 
Germany pay," and almost as ignorant as the economic experts 
themselves concerning the possibilities of that policy. 

Mr. George had indeed created a monster that was to haunt 
and afflict him. Whatever may have been the merits of his 
reconstruction schemes, the mere fact of such a majority was 
sufficient to make nonsense of them. However just may have 
been his ideas of the peace, he found himself at every stage 
tied, not so much by his own pledges, as by the sentiments and 
commitments of his supporters with their mercantile ideas of 
economic relations. The election of 1918, disfranchising a 
great part of the electorate, was, as will be seen, the main cause 
of all the avoidable misfortunes of the next few years. 



CHAPTER XIX 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 



"DY an unfortunate chance the end of the war found each 
-'-' of the greater Allies under the rule of a one-man gov- 
ernment. Mr. George was master of Britain, M. Clemenceau 
of France, Mr. Wilson of the United States. 

Each of these eminent men had so managed affairs that it 
was almost impossible to delegate authority. They, and they 
alone, had all the threads of policy in their hands; they, and 
they alone, possessed the knowledge, the power, and the pres- 
tige to represent their countries. Each in his own way had 
shown an almost equal intolerance of any kind of rivalry. 

M. Clemenceau had perhaps the best excuse; France, when 
he was called to power, needed a master, and found one in 
"The Tiger." Admirable as a dictator, however, Clemenceau 
was impossible in the character of colleague, and so long as 
he retained authority it was over a cabinet of submissive if 
talented personal retainers. Mr. George's excuse, though less 
valid, was not without plausibility. The only possible states- 
man to take his place at the conference table was Mr. Balfour, 
and Mr. Balfour, well advanced in years, had long ceased to be 
a commanding figure in domestic politics. Mr. Wilson's lone- 
liness was simply determined by his character, and his char- 
acter was largely determined by his profession. He had 
governed America much as a s<ihoolmaster governs his school ; 
his peculiar jealousy of all rivalry had deprived him of dis- 
tinguished assistance from his own party, and it seemed to 
him as absurd to call the Republican leaders into consultation 
as it would have been to ask his Princeton students what ques- 
tions they would like in an examination paper. He had been 
secluded and aloof throughout the war ; he was resolved to be 
as solitary and despotic in the making of peace. 

276 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 277 

In all three cases there was a real element of weakness in 
the apparent self-sufficiency. Clemenceau was sure of his own 
mind, but could not be sure of his bloc. Mr. George was sure 
of his bloc, but not so sure of his own mind, or of the larger 
and less articulate public opinion at home. Mr. Wilson began 
by being sure of everything, and ended by being sure of noth- 
ing, except the goodness of his own intentions. Least of all 
was he sure of America, 

Most relevant to the present narrative are the handicaps of 
the British statesman. For the first time in his life, perhaps 
Mr. George felt seriously the want of a "formal education." 
So far it had been on the whole no inconsiderable advantage 
to him that, without the conventionalising effects of the public 
school and university, he possessed most of the essential knowl- 
edge either could have given him, together with much that 
could only have been learned in his own very practical academy. 
But now, in face of the exceedingly complicated problems of 
the peace a certain discipline of mind, hardly attainable except 
in early life, would have been useful to him. Three years 
at Oxford, moreover, would have put him on his guard against 
a most dangerous tendency to over-estimate the kind of ability 
and judgment typified by one who now exerted over him a 
remarkable influence. We have seen how light a view he had 
once taken of Lord Milner. In the intimacy of the War Cabi- 
net, however, the unreasonable contempt had given way to a 
scarcely more reasonable admiration. The consummate artist 
is often unduly humble in the presence of mere knowledge and 
accomplishment, and the amplitude of Lord Milner's informa- 
tion, the neatness with which his mind was packed with ab- 
truse facts and familiar theories, greatly impressed Mr. 
George. It was the sort of reverence young Peter the Great, 
with his enormous potentialities and actual slovenliness, might 
have felt for some trim and compact and capable shopkeeping 
state councillor at Amsterdam. With some academic memo- 
ries of his own, the Prime Minister would have realised that 
Lord Milner was merely the highest example of a kind of man 
who is always graduating from Balliol, winning a good place 
in the Civil Service, and ending a "brilliant career" with a 



278 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

knighthood and a pension. It is a type of man nearly always 
gifted with administrative talents, quick of comprehension, 
generally dogmatic and self-confident, highly qualified to carry 
out other people's ideas, but less satisfactory when playing a 
creative part. Mr. George, who would not have trusted Lord 
Milner's instincts in war, was disposed to accept him as an 
authority on the peace, and he went to Paris not only with his 
Bristol pledges round his neck, but with the much more serious 
weight of the Milnerian theory that German unity deserved to 
be and must be preserved. 

A second handicap was soon to be imposed. On December 
13, 191 8, President Wilson landed at Brest. An American 
journalist described his arrival as the "most momentous ex- 
perience" of the ancient city "since Julius Caesar arrived there, 
55 years before the birth of Christ, on his way to add Britain 
to the Roman Empire." President Wilson, of somewhat 
vaguer but more expansive ambition than the Roman, was bent 
on extending his sway to regions Caesar never knew. De- 
scending on London on Boxing Day, he conferred with Mr. 
George at Downing-Street, and had little difficulty in persuad- 
ing him that the League of Nations must be established at the 
Peace Conference. 

The League was far more popular in Great Britain than in 
the land of its origin, but even among those who were enthu- 
siastic for its inception many, perhaps a majority, believed 
in making peace first. The problems of peace-making — such 
was their argument — were highly concrete and brooked no de- 
lay. The constitution of the League, on the other hand, was 
a matter to which too much time and thought could hardly 
be devoted, and to attempt to rush up so immense an edifice 
with the speed of a sky-scraper was to risk a rickety peace as 
well as a jerry-built league. 

President Wilson was peremptorily of the contrary opinion. 
Peace-making and league-making, in his view, must proceed 
concurrently. Mr. Wilson was a very proud, very stately, very 
stubborn man, at this time in the full enjoyment of a world- 
wide moral authority for which history scarcely affords a 
parallel. He was, moreover, conceived by British statesmen 



I 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 27^ 

to have behind him the great weight of an almost unanimous 
American opinion. He had shown himself not unsympathetic, 
in the matter of "freedom of the seas," with Great Britain ; 
he had freely "conceded" her "peculiar position as an island 
empire," and after the recognition of this geographical fact 
Mr. George may well have thought it ungraceful to refuse an 
equivalent concession. 

Thus it was agreed that peace and the league were to be 
made together ; and a temptation to cloudy thinking and inde- 
cisive action was automatically introduced into the councils 
of the victors. For it could always be maintained that if a 
particular expedient did not work well, or if a given arrange- 
ment failed of its purpose, there was the League of Nations 
duly made and provided to set right such deficiencies. It can 
never be satisfactory to work simultaneously on the founda- 
tions and the roof of a building, but the risks of indifferent 
results are increased when one does not quite know which is 
to be foundation and which roof. That was precisely the 
position with regard to the League of Nations. Either it was 
the foundation of the whole peace, in which case it should 
have been constructed first, or it was the completion of the 
whole peace, in which case it should have been considered last., 
The procedure in fact adopted spoiled both peace and league. 

Mr. George, then, on taking his place at the first plenary 
session of the Conference on January i8, 1919, had before 
him a programme of four points — 

( 1 ) Germany must pay for the war to the limit of her 

capacity. 

(2) The Kaiser and his accomplices must be brought to 

trial. 

(3) Germany must not be dismembered. 

(4) The League of Nations must be set up concurrently 

with the Treaty. 

The first two commitments arose from Mr. George's election 
pledges. The third restriction was the product of the Mil- 
nerian school of thought, but was also intimately connected 
with point number one, for it was plain that any diminution of 



280 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

German territory must lessen Germany's capacity to pay. On 
the other hand, it might be argued that a Germany httle re- 
duced in population, and encouraged to grow rich in order 
that she should pay a heavy tine for her misdeeds, must always 
be tempted, and would some day have the power, to wage a 
war of revenge. Such critics could be met by the plausible, if 
not convincing reply that with Mr. Wilson's league in being 
wars were impossible. 

There was a fifth point, not less important because it was 
only implied, in Mr. George's summary of essentials. 
Throughout the war, he had stood in a quite special sense for 
the doctrine that no circumstances justitied even the tempo- 
rary abandonment of an Ally. In IQ15 he had pleaded for 
help to Serbia: in igi6 he had demanded help for Roumania, 
parting with Mr. Asquith because none was sent; in 191 7 he 
had given help in full measure to Italy. It may be confidently 
assumed that he went to Paris with a full realisation of his 
obligation to see that France did not suffer through his con- 
cern with the other points of his programme. 

Unfortunately for these resolutions, however, they were 
subject to constant erosion in contact with the pledges to ex- 
tract the uttermost farthing from Germany and with the con- 
viction that the Hohenzollern Empire deserved, as a "pro- 
gressive'* organisation, quite other measure than that meted 
out to its unfortunate Hapsburg neighbour. As soon as the 
question of reparations and indemnities was raised there began 
the conflict between ]\Ir. George's feelings on the one side and 
his engagements and obsessions on the other. The represent- 
ative of Belgium put in a claim for priority in regard to any 
pavmetits made by Germany. It was. surely, a reasonable 
claim. French and British statesmen had always agreed in 
regarding Belgium with a peculiar respect and tenderness, and 
even most Germans admitted that, whoever might be to blame 
for the war, Belgium was innocent, and should from some 
source or other be compensated for the violation of her neu- 
trality. "Our people have trusted you; do not refuse what 
they expect," exclaimed M. Vandervelde. Mr. George, oppos- 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 281 

ing priority, could only reply, "You have fewer dead than we." 
For other reasons France had special claims. She had suf- 
fered more than any of the Western Allies. Her territory had 
been over-run; her people had been treated with the most 
savage cruelty; a deliberate attempt had been made to ruin 
her industrially by the systematic destruction of her chief 
manufacturing and coal-bearing areas. But Mr. George, with 
point Number One always before him, was obliged to argue 
that the French claims were excessive, that the Chemin des 
Dames would still bring bids if it were put up to auction, and 
that town-halls, churches and houses had never been so highly 
valued before the war. 

All this, be it understood, was not argument for moderation 
to a defeated enemy, or in favour of restricting demands to 
the "damage" specially indicated in Mr. Wilson's notes. For 
Mr. George had already declared that Germany could be prop- 
erly called on to bear the whole cost of the war, and that she 
must pay to the limit of her capacity. He seems, moreover, to 
have been convinced in these early days that an almost un- 
limited tribute could be forced from the enemy if, in the words 
of Sir Eric Geddes, she were "squeezed till the pips 
squeaked." What hesitations he had at Bristol were dissipated 
by the report of the special commission appointed by the 
Supreme Council to ascertain Germany's liabilities and her 
capacity to meet them. The bill presented by the commission 
covered the cost of the war as well as damage to Allied prop- 
erty, and its total was a present value of a thousand thousand 
million francs, or three times that amount if payments were 
spread over fifty years. 

Mr. George seems to have fallen to the magic of this gigan- 
tic figure without going into the question of how it could be 
collected. The British representative on the Commission 
which framed the bill was Mr. W. M. Hughes, of Australia, 
whom a French colleague ^ describes as "a little deaf man, 
impetuous, clear-headed, blunt and aggressive as an orator." 
Mr. Hughes had from the first protested against any limita- 
tion of the Allies' claims in the sense of President Wilson's 

* M. Andre Tardieu. 



282 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

pre-Armistice notes, and had declared that he did not con- 
sider himself bound by them. It was not wonderful that he 
should take this view. Under the one interpretation of "dam- 
age" France would get much, and Belgium a good deal, the 
British Empire as a whole would have a considerable claim 
for submarine damage, but Australia would receive scarcely 
anything. Mr. George had therefore not only to consider his 
own House of Commons majority: he was also under a ne- 
cessity of seeing that Mr. Hughes, who had spoken so loudly, 
did not look ridiculous in the eyes of Australia. 

Thus, while President Wilson protested against the exten- 
sion of "damage" to cover the costs of the war, and while the 
French and Belgians suggested concentration on "reparations" 
and payment for war pensions, Messrs. George and Hughes 
were for sending in a bill for the entire war costs — a fact 
which should have been remembered at a later period when 
France was habitually represented as a vindictive and irra- 
tional creditor. Ultimately Mr. George abandoned his extreme 
position, but with some nervousness. "Our public," he said, 
"requires reparation to be as complete as possible," and he 
insisted that, since the whole expenses of the war could not be 
recovered, clauses should be inserted in the treaty to the eflfect 
that if they were not exacted it was not because it would be 
unjust to claim them, but because payment in full was an 
impossibility. M. Clemenceau, the remorseless realist, re- 
marked that all this was "a question of wording." But as 
one who knew the troubles of a parliamentary statesman, he 
had no objection whatever to Mr. George putting himself right 
with critical supporters. 

This dispute over money exactions hardly showed Mr, 
George at his happiest, and he was doubtless uneasily con- 
scious of the fact. He was revealed neither as a statesman 
clearly distinguishing between mirage and fact, nor as an 
idealist to whom moral values are paramount, but rather as 
one of his own business men flustered by something out of the 
ordinary routine. Possibly a feeling that he had not figured 
to advantage helped the spell cast over him by Lord Milner, 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 283 

and made him, in his dealings with Germany, a kind of in- 
verted Shylock, eager for cash, but resolute against any opera- 
tion on the body of the defendant. 

Alsace-Lorraine, of course, had to be restored. But to the 
claims of Poland Mr. George was notably unsympathetic. As 
a Nonconformist Radical he could hardly feel any great love 
for a landlord-ridden country more stubborn in its attachment 
to the Roman Catholic faith than any other part of Europe 
save Ireland. But he seems also to have been prejudiced 
against the Poles as a poor business race. In the matter of 
the Danzig corridor he sided with Germany against the Poles 
and President Wilson. In the matter of Silesia, he sided 
with Germany against the Poles and the French. "You can- 
not," he is reported as saying,^ "place millions of Germans, 
who, whatever their faults, are a very advanced people, under 
the domination of the Poles, who are far less civilised." 

It was precisely the same sort of argument that the pan- 
Germans had used for thirty years before to justify the great 
plans of absorption which the war nearly carried to success. 
Mr. George, however, was conscious of no inconsistency. 
While the sentimental side of him is open to the appeal of the 
little people rightly struggling to be free, his practical side is 
but too apt to accept a purely material test of civilisation, and 
if it were a question between Poles being under Germans or 
Germans under Poles the reflection that Poland had no Krupp 
or Vulcan was bound to be decisive. Who, indeed, of us can 
cast a stone? In British eyes the Irish tangle has constantly 
been prejudged by the fact that Belfast has much machinery 
and that Waterford has little. 

On the subject of the Western frontier Mr. George was 
equally wedded to the view that German territory must be left 
substantially intact, first because there must be no "new Alsace- 
Lorraines," secondly because Germany could not pay a great 
money indemnity if her area were sensibly diminished. Here 
there was a sharp conflict with French opinion. The differ- 
ence of view was natural enough. To Great Britain the Ger- 
*Mr. Sisley Huddleston. 



284 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

man menace was naval, and it seemed to have disappeared with 
the surrender of the High Sea Fleet. To France it was mili- 
tary, and every Frenchman knew if only from memories of 
his own nation's recovery from great disasters in the field, 
how transient may be the effects of unimproved victory. 
France was less impressed than England by the flight of the 
Hohenzollerns ; their empire remained, its inspiring ideas re- 
mained, and with little diminution in size and population it 
must become again formidable within a very few years. 
Therefore some great and permanent subtraction must be made 
from the strength of Prussianised Germany. This was not 
merely the view of Chauvinists. M. Ives Guyot, favourable 
as a Free Trader to the least possible hindrance of commercial 
relations with the German peoples, was not less insistent than 
Nationalists of the type of M. Maurice Barres and M. Maur- 
ras. To the ordinary Frenchmen, in short, the necessity of 
dismembering the Empire created in 1871 was axiomatic, and 
to M. Clemenceau, as to Marshal Foch, it seemed that as a 
minimum of security the left bank of the Rhine should be in 
some way detached from Prussia, preferably by conversion 
into an autonomous buffer state. 

Mr. George was stubbornly opposed to any such project. 
His first impression of Paris had been the Strassburg statue 
draped in black, and he was resolved that Germany should 
have no pretext to maintain a similar memorial, mourning a 
national humiliation and prompting a national revenge. It 
was useless to argue that the Rhineland, with its Roman tra- 
dition, had little in common with the newer civilisation beyond, 
and least of all with the kidtiir of Pomerania and Branden- 
burg. President Wilson, tender as was his conscience on the 
question of nationalities, does not seem to have been at first 
outraged by the French proposal. But Mr. George was ada- 
mant in opposition. Many forces were pulling him in the same 
direction. There was his own sincere sentiment. There was 
the fact that if five million Germans were detached from the 
Empire there would be five millions fewer to work for the ful- 
filment of the Bristol pledges. There was the fact that Lord 
Milner, with his Balliol infallibility, had predicted dreadful 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 285 

things in Berlin if the German Empire were not kept together.^ 
And, not least decisive, there was General Smuts. 

The General had played an honourable and splendid part 
in the war, he had afterwards proved himself a wise counsel- 
lor, and when he spoke at the conference in his capacity of 
South African representative he was merely a steady-going 
delegate trying to get the best for his country in the matters 
of indemnities and mandated territories. But when he touched 
European affairs the statesman was swallowed up in the 
idealogue. Smuts believed quite honestly that all virtue re- 
sided with the "Teutonic" race, and that Germans, if erring 
brethren, were still brethren. Mr. George, as a Celt, was free 
from this racial prejudice, but with his mind always open on 
questions of detail — including very big details — he was pe- 
culiarly susceptible to the influence of the last speaker, and 
from a talk with General Smuts he would go to a meeting of 
the "Big Four" with proposals which made M. Clemenceau 
wonder (sometimes aloud) whether the Allies were to ask 
Germany's pardon for having taken the liberty of beating her. 

M. Andre Tardieu says : — ^ 

"Those who knew how to talk to the British Prime Minister 
could always bring him back to fundamental principles. The 
infinite sensitiveness of his mind, his passionate love of success, 
led him to improvise arguments which did not always bear 
examination, or were too exclusively pro-British. But when a 
man who enjoyed his respect answered the bold suggestions of 
his quick brain with those permanent truths he had momen- 
tarily deserted, he came back to them when the time arrived for 
final discussion." 

The urbanity of this criticism does not altogether obscure 
its point. In face of the comparatively simple questions of the 
war Mr. George's intense energy and conviction preserved him 
from all but the minimum of vacillation. But here, sur- 
rounded by every kind of complexity, continually encountering 
facts and theories of which he scarcely heard, he was a harp 

*A remarkable utterance by Lord Milner on the subject appeared in the 
Evening Standard of London shortly before the Armistice. 

* "The Truth about the Treaty" (English translation). 



286 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

on which many hands could play many tunes. It must be 
allowed that where the more obvious British interests were 
concerned he was a faithful and vigilant steward, and perhaps 
even erred in his anxiety for the aggrandisement of the British 
Empire. This appetite for "mandates" was scarcely less no- 
table than his desire for a great money indemnity. But on 
those great questions on which Great Britain was less directly 
(though perhaps at bottom more vitally) concerned, his in- 
terest was small, and his liability to influence correspondingly 
great. M. Clemenceau might, no doubt, bring him back to one 
"fundamental principle," that of the Alliance, which was to 
make Germany impotent for harm. But there were other 
"fundamental principles" — those of President Wilson, Lord 
Milner, General Smuts, and the Labour leaders who so often 
breakfasted with him — and to these very different fundamental 
principles he was also "brought back." 

Hence it was never easy to predict on which side of a fence 
he would descend, still less easy to feel assured that, having 
leaped, he would not leap back again. Occasionally M. Clem- 
enceau, for whom he felt respect and perhaps a little awe, pre- 
vailed over all other influences. Thus in the matter of the 
Saar Valley Mr. George stood by France in resistance to Presi- 
dent Wilson and in defiance of pressure from home. Capital 
and Labour in the British Coalfields, and especially in South 
Wales, were united in opposition to the proposal that France, 
instead of importing coal at fancy prices, should be given in 
the Saar mines some compensation for the loss of her own 
collieries, war-wasted or deliberately destroyed. Mr. Wilson, 
on his side, strongly opposed on the grounds that the popu- 
lation of the Saar Valley was almost purely Teutonic, that the 
district had always been politically German, and that its trans- 
ference would be a violation of the principle of self-determi- 
nation. None of these arguments had weight with Mr. 
George. On the one side his most generous sentiments were 
affronted by the unsightly spectacle of the British coal trade 
not only squeezing the uttermost shilling out of an Ally's pres- 
ent necessities, but praying that those necessities should be 
perpetuated. On the other side, he would recognise no politi- 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 287 

cal hardship, and even went so far as to declare that "if in a 
few years a plebiscite takes place, the people will not ask again 
to belong to Germany." 

On this last point he was probably unaware of inconsistency. 
Plainly the arguments which he used against the detachment 
of the left bank of the Rhine, and the establishment of an 
autonomous government applied with still greater force to 
the proposal to place under alien administration a rather excep- 
tionally homogeneous German population. Plainly, also, there 
was no more reason to expect that the Saar Valley inhabitants 
would become reconciled to their fate than there was to sup- 
pose that the Rhine provinces might find content in separation 
from Prussia. The truth seems to be that Mr. George rea- 
soned like Marryat's servant girl. If the alienation of the Saar 
were indeed a sin, it was "only a little one." 

Towards the end of March Mr. George suffered a sharp 
attack of "nerves." Under the direction of one Bela Cohen 
a Bolshevik government had been proclaimed in Hungary.^ 
That a Jewish dictator would enjoy no enduring dominion in 
a land of Catholic peasants it needed no great insight to fore- 
see. But to Mr. George the rise of Cohen was a portent. 
Lord Milner, then, was right, Bolshevism was coming west- 
ward. A little more delay in settlement, a little more pressure 
on Germany, and Berlin might go the way of Budapesth. 
From Germany the plague would infect France and Italy, and 
then — "if they once may win the bridge, what hope to save 
the town?" The Prime Minister's lively imagination tortured 
him with visions of terrible things happening in solid England 
— a Cockney Lenin at Downing Street, perhaps a yokel 
Trotsky at the War Office, Manchester and Leeds and Glas- 
gow in the grip of bloodthirsty commissars. The profound 
impression made by the Hungarian Sovietists, was not with- 
out a considerable reaction on British domestic policy. On 
the course of the Peace Conference its effect was immediately 
important. "They will not sign" was thenceforth the Prime 
Minister's ordinary form of remonstrance. On March 26th 
he wrote a note insisting on the dangers of a "punitive peace," 
*0n March 21st, 



288 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

and declaring that no attempt must be made to separate the 
Rhine provinces from the rest of Germany.^ 

About the same time there appeared in the Westminster 
Gazette an interview with a ''high authority" who had ex- 
pressed "moderate" views of a similar tenour, "You cannot 
go on stripping Germany bare," said this influential personage. 
"If," he persisted, "we give Germany a deadly wound there 
(on the Polish frontier) good-bye to the prospects of perma- 
nent peace." The thing was in substance such a declaration 
as might have come from almost any representative of that 
school of thought which maintained that the cunning piece of 
carpentry known as the German Empire should be held spe- 
cially sacred. In manner, however, the interview suggested 
the Prime Minister. 

"Think," said the high authority, "of the gigantic and com- 
plicated problems which we have to unravel. It is not only 
their magnitude, but their variety. I confess I was ignorant 
of the very existence of some of the places now hotly disputed, 
and upon which the issue of peace and war depends. Every 
tiny piece of land which is in discussion is a possible battle- 
ground which may grow into a battleground as big as 
Europe." 

Mr. George has a disarming way of confessing his minor 
limitations — about this time he declared almost boastfully that 
he had "never heard of Teschen" — and the admission of geo- 
graphical bafflement was generally regarded as conclusive proof 
of the identity of the "high authority." Consternation pre- 
vailed at Westminster, and on behalf of 370 members of par- 
liament Colonel Claude Lowther telegraphed to the Prime 
Minister that Germany must be "made to pay." This alarm 
infected the general public; French opinion was greatly moved; 
and at the beginning of April Mr. George found it necessary 
to assure a French paper ^ that the best feeling prevailed in 
the Conference chamber, and that "diflFerences were being 
adjusted." In fact, there was chaos. The French were press- 
ing for a Rhine settlement. Mr. George was opposing the 

* To Mr. Sisley Huddleston, the Paris correspondent of The Times. 

' "Le Matin." 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 289 

cession of the "corridor" to Poland. Signor Orlando had 
threatened to withdraw because a Serbian delegate had been 
invited to give his views on the Adriatic. President Wilson, 
after ordering the George Washington for his homeward 
voyage, had retired to bed, and Lansing declared that such 
horizontal attitude then "justified speculation as to its mean- 
ing." Colonel House, at once more outspoken and more ob- 
scure, characterised the Italian trouble as "pure bunk." 

Such was the troubled scene which Mr. George quitted for 
Westminster in order to explain his activities to the faithful 
but disquieted Commons. He had no difficulty in scoring a 
great parliamentary triumph, and perhaps never before or 
since has he shown equal adroitness in avoiding the main issue. 
Like the youthful barrister of Gilbert — 

His argument was novel ; 
For a verdict he relied 
On blackening the junior 
Upon the other side. 

With wonderful audacity he laid on Lord Northclifife (who 
had never owned or controlled the Westminster Gazette) the 
whole responsibility for the commotion caused by the state- 
ment of the "high authority." From his speech a thoughtful 
reader might almost have inferred that the former journalist 
ally, now converted into a bitter critic, had been the prime 
mover in a plot to ruin Mr. George by imputing to him a pro- 
German policy. But in fact the reader was not given the 
chance to infer anything because he was not given the chance 
to think. He was simply carried away by the impetuous rush 
of brilliant irrelevancy. He was moved to respect by Mr. 
George's picture of the negotiators — their goodness, their pa- 
tience, their harmony, the purity of their hearts, the clarity 
of their understandings. He was moved to pity by the un- 
merited tribulations of these just men at the hands of the 
peace-breakers — "stones clattering through the roof, and 
crashing through the windows, and sometimes wild men 
screaming through the key-holes." He was moved to suspi- 
cion by a suggestion of motive, and to laughter by a bold 



290 JNIR. LLOYD GEORGE 

simile — Lord Northcliffe was actually compared to a "grass- 
hopper." The effect of all this wit, pathos and severity was 
decisive. Without saying anything that was really to the 
point, Mr. George returned to Paris with the pleasing con- 
sciousness that he had now nothing to fear but Bolshevism 
and Germany's refusal to sign. 

In the end, says M. Tardieu, he suggested "unthinkable 
concessions on almost every point." But meanwhile a sort of 
settlement had been reached on certain vital matters. There 
was a lengthy conference, without secretaries or interpreters, 
between President Wilson, M. Clemenceau, and Mr. George, on 
the question which was to France important above all others 
— that of securing herself against a revived and revengeful 
Germany. The English-speaking statesmen would not accept 
the Rhine project in any form ; M. Clemenceau firmly declined 
various counter-proposals. At last the British and American 
representatives put forward a really seductive proposal. 
France was offered the guarantee of an alliance — both Powers 
binding themselves to resist any "unprovoked attack" on Ger- 
many's part — if she would forego the occupation of the Rhine 
bridge-heads and the plan for a separate Rhenish State. 

M. Clemenceau. though attracted, trod warily. The British 
offer was good enough, for Mr. George had a sure parlia- 
mentary majority, and the only trouble was that there must 
always be a certain time during which France would have 
single-handed to defend a poor strategic frontier. But what 
about President Wilson's authority to pledge his country? To 
suggest mistrust was to offend a very sensitive pride ; to accept 
without question was to pay the price of a great something 
for possibly less than nothing. M. Clemenceau, after a month 
of dexterous manoeuvring, won the President to the view that 
France needed something more. Occupation of the left bank 
for a period of fifteen years was finally authorised and evacu- 
ation even at the end of this time was made dependent on the 
sufficiency of other guarantees against German aggression. 
This was Clemenceau's master-stroke. Guessing, correctly, as 
the event proved, that the President's undertaking would not 
be accepted by the United States, that with this refusal the 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 291 

British undertaking would become of no binding effect, he 
looked forward to the time when France might have to fight 
again for her Hfe, and fight alone. If so, he was resolved that 
the battle should be on German soil. The Alliance might fail 
to realise itself, but the watch on the Rhine would be still a 
solid fact. 

Mr. George fought his hardest against the occupation 
clauses. Occupation, he argued, was both unjust and unnec- 
essary; it would absorb the indemnities, and would infallibly 
in time rouse sympathy for Germany in Great Britain and 
America. But M. Clemenceau, now supported by President 
Wilson, had his way, and in June Germany was informed that 
such guarantees were needful because the contracting parties 
included those "whose promises have proved unworthy of our 
faith." So ended a long and bitter struggle. The result was 
far from satisfactory. It permitted in Great Britain of the 
legend of a vindictive militaristic, and overweening France, 
intolerable in the day of her triumph as she had ever been 
under Louis the Great or Napoleon. It allowed the equally 
unjustified feeling to gain strength in France that Great Britain 
cherished a secret hostility to her Ally and a secret tenderness 
for her enemy. It left the problem of the Rhine unsettled, 
and held, as Mr. George quite justly foresaw, the germs of 
much future trouble. 

Whatever the crimes of Germany it was not pleasant for 
any European to contemplate an extended military occupation 
of her most highly civilised provinces by Senegalese and Mo- 
roccans; if such a humiliation were justified at all, it would 
have been more appropriately inflicted on the home of the 
chief plotters of the war than on the pleasant cities and gra- 
cious lands of the Rhine. Add that a standing obstacle was 
created to general disarmament, and the arrangement can com- 
mand only an exceedingly qualified approval. Nevertheless the 
French cannot be justly blamed for their insistence on a safe- 
guard even though we may regard the particular form of safe- 
guard as involving great evils. They at least could not afford 
to nourish illusions. M. Clemenceau has been severely handled 
by British idealists for envisaging European history as "a per- 



292 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

petual prize fight, of which France has won this round, but of 
which this round is certainly not the last." ^ But after all it 
was natural — natural too, that he should believe the German 
"without generosity or remorse in negotiation" — in view of 
the things he had seen, and the transactions in which he had 
been involved, in the course of an active life of over half a 
century. He had personally taken part in resistance to a suc- 
cessful attempt to dismember, and an almost successful at- 
tempt to destroy his own country. Now, in the moment of 
victory, he heard on all sides vague talk of securing universal 
peace, but no\vhere a definite plan for avoiding even one war. 
Is it wonderful, on the whole, that "his philosophy had no 
room for sentimentality," and that his philosophy was shared 
by nearly all Frenchmen ? 

Whatever else might be said of M. Clemenceau, he had, like 
the Biglow hero, a "middling tight grip of the handful of 
things that he knew." Mr. George's grip except as regarded 
purely British interests, was intermittent. His treatment of 
the Russian question, as that of others, was determined mainly 
by changes in his moods and his consultors. At first he joined 
President Wilson in advocating a conference at which all the 
Russian parties, including the Bolsheviks, should be repre- 
sented. "The Bolsheviks," he said, "were the very people 
some of them wished to hear." But nothing came of the 
project. The Bolsheviks continued fighting despite the ap- 
peals that they should engage in conversations at Prince's 
Island. The other Russian parties frankly declined to meet 
them ; and in course of time Mr. George, under Mr. Churchill's 
influence, changed his mind. But his mind was never quite 
made up. Mr. Churchill might persuade him to lavish millions 
in helping Koltchak, Denikin, and other anti-Bolshevik leaders. 
But at long last somebody or something else decided him to 
abandon each in turn. 

The history of the Turkish negotiations reveals a similar 

want of decision. In the beginning Mr. George preached the 

old Radical doctrine that the Turk must not be permitted to 

rule any Christian population, and in this view, he was, of 

*Mr. J. M. Keynes, "The Economic Consequence of the Peace." 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 293 

course, supported by M. Venizelos, the very able representa- 
tive of Greece, and by Sir Basil Zaharoff and other v^^ealthy 
men of Hellenic extraction or sympathies. Resentment of 
Young Turk treachery had revived the sentiment of "bag and 
baggage," and for a few months Mr. George was imagined as 
translating Gladstonian rhetoric into action. In the cabinet, 
however, there was a minor but quite effective Disraeli in the 
person of Mr. Montagu, and in the end the Turk was main- 
tained on the banks of the Bosphorus. 

Indeed, of all the leading figures at the Conference, Mr. 
George was the one who least knew, as regarded the more 
general issues, exactly what he wanted. President Wilson 
wanted the millennium, and might at least have got the League 
of Nations if he could have induced his countrymen to accept 
it. M. Clemenceau wanted above all security for France, after 
that compensation for France. The aims of Signor Orlando, 
of M. Venizelos, of M. Passitch, even of the Emir Feisul were 
intelligible enough. But Mr. George never quite succeeded in 
fixing in his mind what he did want ; he sometimes failed even 
to fix in other people's minds what he did not want. After 
February he almost forgot to demand the Kaiser's head. For 
some time longer he wanted, probably, to "make Germany 
pay." But in the end he seems to have been chiefly anxious 
to make Germany sign. By the summer of 1919 the statesman 
who had fared so gaily to France, with high hopes of a peace 
at once sternly just and benignly healing, was a weary and 
disillusioned man, mainly anxious to be back to Downing- 
Street and Walton Heath. 

But there were moments when the spirit of the great war 
minister, depressed by that hot and mephitic atmosphere, still 
responded nobly to stimulus. Such a moment came on the 
afternoon of May 7, when at a Plenary Session of the Confer- 
ence, the Draft Peace Treaty was handed to the Germans by 
M. Clemenceau. Brockdorff-Rantzau, "draped in brutish in- 
solence," replied without rising to his feet, that Germany had 
not alone been responsible for the war, and that the Allied 
terms were dictated by hatred and revenge. It is said that Mr. 
Balfour yawned. Mr. George, less of a philosopher, felt the 



294 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

blood run hot to his forehead. "It is hard," he said, to a 
French delegate, "to have won the war and to have to listen 
to that." Perhaps the great mistake of the Conference, per- 
haps the great misfortune of the Prime Minister, was that the 
Germans were excluded from it. I'^or, with all his sensitive- 
ness to plausible suggestion, with all his love of the sounding 
phrase and the satisfying formula, Mr. George is emphatically 
a man, with real blood and sinew. If he can be sometimes 
bemused he can never be safely defied; and there is withal in 
him a certain realism which on due occasion clears away all 
the mists of cant and hearsay that are apt to gather round 
him. Weekly doses of Prussianism in the concrete would have 
been a sovereign specific for the Prime Minister's chief 
troubles. Unfortunately Brockdortf-Rantzau arrived too late. 
Mr. George might flame momentarily into an indignation that 
became him. But he was already committed to a peace which 
gave Germany every incentive to a war of revenge, while fail- 
ing to deprive her of the means of waging it — a peace which 
laid on her a financial obligation impossible to meet, unless 
she were to be nursed back to a power and prosperity which 
would enable her to defy her creditors. 

Such in broad outline were the concrete achievements of 
Mr. George as peace plenipotentiary. So dry a summary, 
taken by itself, might suggest that he produced on his col- 
leagues and subordinates an impression disastrously unequal 
to his great reputation. The exact opposite is the fact. The 
power and charm of his personality were never more potent 
than during these months. At no time were more signally 
illustrated his dexterity in devising expedients, his fertility in 
suggestions of compromise, his nimbleness of wit, his amaz- 
ing capacity of catching at once the superficial tone of any 
society, however unfamiliar, or the superficial drift of any 
question, however obscure. Never had he exercised more 
brilliantly those rather dangerous faculties of "building flying 
bridges over incompatibles." An acute but hardly s\Tnpathetic 
critic * has described him as "watching the company with six 
*Mr. J. M. Keynes, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace." 



AT THE PEACE TABLE 295 

or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging char- 
acter, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each 
was thinking, and even what each was going to say next, and 
compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal 
best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his im- 
mediate auditor." 

To the cynical philosophy of Clemenceau and the idealism 
of Wilson, he could oppose but little in the way of consecu- 
tive thought ; his broader policy was a thing of shreds and 
patches, a curious compound to the making of which his own 
"noble sentiment," shrewd instinct for the average man's view, 
and occasional statesmanlike inspirations contributed equally 
with ideas borrowed from whomever might have his ear at 
the moment. But if Clemenceau might sometimes make grim 
jests concerning his lack of information ^ on questions which 
arose suddenly, without giving him an opportunity to prime 
himself, even that grim old warrior was forced to respect the 
unerring accuracy with which he found the weak joints in an 
adversary's harness. 

Not less remarkable was the manner in which he precisely 
fitted the argument to the man, and the botte to the fencer. 
In dealing with Mr. Wilson he would first, in all meekness and 
innocence, demolish while applauding the moral foundation of 
the President's position; then, with wonderful address, he 
would suggest another foundation just as good, and appar- 
ently but a mere trifle different. With Clemenceau, on the 
other hand, he would adopt rather the good-humoured air of 
Mr, Bucket — the style of, "You know me and I know you; 
you're a man of the world, you know, and a man of business, 
and a man of sense ; that's what you are." In the quick rapier 
play of debate he had no equal ; in smoothing over differences 
between other parties his skill was incomparable; and he estab- 
lished a personal ascendancy over the Conference scarcely 
inferior to that which he enjoyed among his fellow-statesmen 
at home. 

*"Mr. George," said another Frenchman, "can certainly read, but has 
he ever read an)rthing?" This, of course, must be accepted as the joke it 
was meant to be. Mr. George is a great reader, or perhaps rather a great 
skimmer. He browses rather than studies. 



29(> INIK. T.LOYD C^KORGK 

M. Tardicu. wiititii; from iiuMuory of many licated debates 
beliind the scones, says : ' 

"IMr. Lloyd George argued like a sharp-sliooter, with sudden 
bm^sts of cordial apiMoval and equally freiiuent gusts of anger, 
with wealth of brilliant imagination and copious historical 
reminiscences. Clasping his knees in his hands, he would sit 
by the lire-place, utterly indilTerent to technical argument, ir- 
resistibly attracted ti^ unexpected solutions, dazzling with elo- 
quence anil wit. but moved solely by high appeals to permanent 
bonds of friendship, and always fearful of parliamentary con- 
sequences." 

We have here the man in all his strength and weakness as 
he showed himself in those critical days — a man not genuinely 
statesmanlike in habit or temper, but capable of flashes of true 
inspiration, impatient of iletail. almost morbidly fertile in 
expedient, scornful of precedent, loving novelty for its own 
sake, prone to treat illustrations as logical analogies, sensitive 
to sentimental appeal, a supreme political gladiator, and a very 
human person. M. Tardieu is no doubt representative of Mr. 
George's foreign colleagues. He is not intellectually domi- 
nated by the statesman. But he makes it verv clear that he 
was not proof against the fascinaticMi of the tnan. 

*"The Truth About tlic Treaty" (Kuglish translation). 



CHAPTER XX 

DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 

FOR his "pre-eminent services" in war-making and peace- 
niakinj^ Mr. George received from the King the Order of 
Merit. It is understood that he had previously refused what 
Melbourne distinguished as the Order of "No Damned Merit" 
— the Garter. Mr. George, democrat as he is, no more objects 
to titles than a magistrate objects to imprisonment, — for other 
jH-'Ople, particularly people whom it is desirable to put out of 
the way. His personal preference is to remain David Lloyd 
George. 

In any case no honour could rival that of the popular wel- 
come he received in London on his return from Paris, and no 
pleasure that of his triumphal visit to the little town of Cric- 
cieth where he had set up in practise thirty years before, with 
enough capital to buy a brass plate and too little to buy a stuff 
gown. Small wonder if, in recalling the wonderful series of 
chances which had brought him from the defence of small game 
thieves and trespassers to the prosecution of the greatest 
poacher and remover of landmarks the world has known, he 
should feel himself literally the agent of providence. Time 
and again during those thirty years it had seemed impossible 
that the frail bark of his fortune should escape wreck. Often 
it had seemed doubtful whether the mere pressure of vulgar 
impecuniosity would not crush him. Even six years before, a 
certain cloud hung over him; if he had not exactly failed his 
success was of a dubious kind. Now the "little Welsh solici- 
tor," the "cad of the Cabinet," "half pantaloon and half high- 
wayman," was beyond doubt the most powerful and conspicu- 
ous personage in the British Empire, perhaps the most power- 
ful and conspicuous personage in the world. Those who had 
most meanly reviled his origin, those who had assailed him 

297 



298 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

with the coarsest invective, those who had denounced him as 
the most dangerous and jeered at him as the most flimsy of 
demagogues, were now either his closest colleagues or his meek- 
est sycophants, fawned on him for the crumbs he could throw 
them, or revelled in the less comprehensible ecstasy of disin- 
terested self-abasement. 

Like every successful man, ^Ir. George must have mingled 
contempt with satisfaction in hearing the parliamentar}' ho- 
sannahs which might, at the first change of fortune, be con- 
verted into cries of "Send him to the House of Lords." But 
here in Criccieth he was among friends, people who had stood 
by him through fair weather and foul, whose sympathy had 
heartened him in many a dark hour, and whom, be it said to 
his credit, he had never neglected and imdervalued in the days 
of his greatness. One thing, indeed, was wanting to complete 
the joy of the visit. Mr. George's second father, the shoe- 
maker of Llanystumdwy, was some two years dead, and the 
thought that Richard Lloyd had not survived to see the apothe- 
osis of his ward must have been a sharp reminder of the hol- 
lowness of fame. The Prime Minister would probably have 
exchanged nuich emission of public breath for a touch of that 
vanished hand. 

For a time Britain was little more critical of the Treaty 
than Criccieth. The mere fact of peace was a relief, and few 
were inclined to unfriendly scrutiny of tlie Prime Alinister's 
sheaves. He was recognised as a national hero, and the Ger- 
man indemnity as a national asset. The circumstances, how- 
ever, were such as to make reaction inevitable, and it came 
quickly with the realisation that there are practical discomforts 
attached to living on a "pinnacle of glory.'' One is there ex- 
posed to the worst the east wind can do, and the food supply 
is liable to interruption. The British people soon found the 
draught and the pinch; and no enlargements on the moral 
splendours of their situation could reconcile them to its very 
obvious physical discomforts. 

The success, so unhappily complete, of the election of 1918, 
now added to the Prime Minister's embarrassments. In his 
haste to make sure of a great majority Mr. George had either 



DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 299 

forj^otten the desirability of having a strong party of his own, 
or had been outwitted by the Conservative organiser, Sir George 
Younger, a Scot, a brewer, an exceedingly enthusiastic Tory, 
and an adroit electioneer. Sir George had come to the con- 
clusion that Conservatism must supply the body, and Coalition 
Liberalism only the flavouring of his political brew; it there- 
fore followed, by all rules of the mash-tub, that the hops must 
bear but an insignificant proportion to the malt. As it hap- 
pened the hops, being of rather inferior quality, did not even 
count largely as flavouring. In other words, while the Coalition 
Liberals were a decidedly small minority in the whole Coalition, 
there was no quality to compensate for their numerical inferi- 
ority. The Asquithian Liberals, who might have been a bal- 
ancing force, had almost disappeared, and Labour, by the chance 
that nearly all its intellectuals had been rejected on suspicion 
of "pro-Germanism," was represented only by a rather sulky 
and undistinguished deputation of trade union delegates. 

In short, the House in no sense represented the country, ex- 
cept on the issues of hanging the Kaiser and making Germany 
pay. Accordingly, when those questions were finished with, a 
large part of the electorate felt itself tricked, and, being de- 
barred from constitutional means of making its resentment 
known, became attracted to what was virtually a policy of black- 
mail. On its side the government, deprived of the moral 
strength which springs from the support of great popular force, 
deprived also of means of judging the true value of popular 
forces in opposition, was inclined to believe every local riot a 
portent of revolution, every foolish speech a call to Bolshe- 
vism, every strike an evidence of widespread conspiracy to 
overthrow the social order. Paying liberally for evidence in 
support of its fears, it found naturally that the supply re- 
sponded to the demand. Hence Ministers in general, and the 
Prime Minister in particular, were betrayed into a mixture of 
truculence, suspicion and compliance which was precisely cal- 
culated to manufacture the evils most feared. 

An astonished Britain heard that it was the government's 
duty and intention to "fight Prussianism in the industrial field 
as we fought it on the Continent of Europe." An astonished 



800 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

London saw ugly wooden barricades rising at the entrances to 
Downing Street. An astonished (and most irritated) tax- 
payer saw niilHons devoted, on the one hand to preparations to 
meet rebellion, and on the other to the buying off of alleged 
contingent rebels. The government not only yielded to exist- 
ing blackmailers. It created them in millions. Every threat, 
every accusation, produced more working-class anger; every 
ebullition of working-class anger increased the nervousness of 
the government ; every fresh access of nervousness led to new 
class bribes, and every new class bribe produced, as usual, "one 
ingrate and ten malcontents." 

The evil appeared in the very first days of the new parlia- 
ment. The army, so long held up as an example of cheery 
content and good-will, was impatient to get out of khaki. 
There were processions of soldiers to the War Office, disorders 
in provincial camps, grave breaches of discipline in France. 
The govenmient dealt with the situation in the way which was 
to become so characteristic of its handling of labour difficulties. 
The soldiers were told to be reasonable; they could not all 
expect to return to civil life at once. But meanwhile their pay 
would be increased. In other words they were bribed to keep 
quiet. 

Industrial difficulties swiftly followed. There was trouble 
on the Yorkshire coal-fields, on the Clyde, among the London 
electricians and railwaymen, even in the Metropolitan Police. 
When parliament met in February it was faced by the threat 
of a general strike among the miners, not only for improve- 
ments in wages and conditions, but for the abolition of the 
whole system of private ownership and control. Mr. George's 
method of meeting this "Prussianism in the industrial field" 
was scarcely that by which he had encountered Prussianism 
in the field of battle. He promised a Royal Commission to 
inquire into the problems of nationalisation and "joint con- 
trol," as well as into questions of wages, hours, profits and 
royalties. Nothing, however, would induce the miners to sus- 
pend the strike notices unless they were guaranteed an almost 
immediate finding on hours and wages. This also was con- 
ceded, and on the appointed day Mr. Justice Sankey, chairman 



DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 301 

of the commission, reported in fovour of a two-shilling a day 
increase, a seven hour day to come in force at once, and a six 
hour day to be established in 1921. The recommendations were 
adopted by the government, and immediate stoppage was 
averted, but this respite was purchased dearly. The additional 
cost could only be met by passing it on to the foreign buyer. 
The shortened working day, which was, according to the the- 
ories of fashionable experts, to increase production, had the 
opposite result. It was hardly astonishing. Nobody takes up 
coal-mining as a hobby, and the first use the miner made of his 
increased means was to purchase more leisure. He absented 
himself from the pits as often as he could afford to do so, 
and production suffered. 

For a while, however, there was peace and prosperity on the 
coalfields, the first won by the government's concessions, the 
second by the monopoly prices Britain could still wring from 
the necessities of the Continent. But the policy of Danegelt 
produced its inevitable results. Before March was over the 
railway men, seeing no reason why they should not share in 
the bounties of the government, made trouble. Mr. J. H. 
Thomas, M. P., flew (literally) over to Paris; an accommoda- 
tion was made; an annual expenditure of ten millions was 
added to the taxpayers' burden; and the threat of shut stations 
and lifeless lines, like that of idle mines, was postponed for 
the moment. 

The government, however, had by no means finished with 
the miners. When the Sankey Commission presented its final 
report, showing that half the members and the chairman fa- 
voured nationalisation of the mines, an awkward problem was 
presented to the Prime Minister. The great strike had been 
postponed under the impression, well or ill founded, that the 
government would give legislative effect to all the material 
findings of the commission. 

Mad as this sounds, it was strictly in accordance with re- 
cent precedents of settling great questions of national policy 
by reference to a few people of questionable judgment and 
authority, or by consultation with "the interests concerned." 
The enormous revolution embodied in the Franchise Act of 



302 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

1 91 8 had been arranged by a few party politicians sitting under 
the chairmanship of the Speaker; parHament had Httle to say 
concerning the matter, and the country nothing. The "Trans- 
port Bill," at this time trailing its portentous way through 
parliament, was an even more striking example of the narrow- 
est basis of judgment for a great legislative superstructure. 
The system by which, in the session of 191 9, great projects 
were referred to committees of the House was part of the same 
contempt of average public opinion which would be implied 
in giving legislative form to the majority report of a commis- 
sion of employers, workmen, and faddists sitting under a 
High Court judge. 

Moreover, Mr. George had used words, which might very 
well, having regard to the situation then existing, be inter- 
preted as a pledge to accept and act on the findings. When, 
therefore, he declined to proceed, the miners not unnaturally 
felt not only aggrieved by the refusal, but resentful of what 
they considered the breach of faith. It is certain that Mr. 
George never at any time contemplated nationalisation. Apart 
from any inclinations of his own, his dependence on a House 
of Commons such as that created by Sir George Younger made 
such a policy impossible. On the other hand, what was the 
point of inquiry if the results of the inquiry were not even to 
be considered? The truth, of course, is that the proposal of 
the commission was one of those "unexpected solutions" which 
do not solve, one of those adroit moves which gain time at the 
expense of something even more precious. 

But it was not alone the miners who were beginning to gain 
the impression that the government was one of shifts and 
makeshifts. Something of this character was indeed insep- 
arable from its very constitution. Mr. George was no prime 
minister in the old sense, working with colleagues, trusted and 
trusting, but a very novel kind of dictator, working through 
subordinates who were some of them secret opponents, some 
of them mere creatures, and others in some sense masters. His 
personal ascendancy was as complete as that of Long John 
Silver over the pirate crew. But just as every individual pirate 
had always to be considered as a possible leader of mutiny, and 



DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 303 

a whim common to all had to be humoured at any cost, so the 
Prime Minister had to make constant calculations of the "limit 
of toleration," and could never carry through any scheme ex- 
actly as he might have wished. On the other hand, so com- 
plete was the dependence on him — it might or might not be 
(compare again the case of Captain Silver) the result of confi- 
dence in his judgment or method or intention — that none 
dared give an important decision in his absence. There were 
several men who could put a spoke in his wheel; there were 
none who dared trundle a first class hoop on his own account. 
Mr. Bonar Law was a good leader of the House of Commons 
if we think of the House merely as a debating society; he could 
keep it in a fair humour and arrange its time-table exactly. 
Mr. Austen Chamberlain was a fair Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer if we think of that great official merely as a financial 
bar-maid serving all customers on demand with short pulls 
or long pulls, but not if we regard him as one who has to con- 
sider the cellar and even the malt supply as well as the beer- 
engine. Neither was big enough to take the Prime Minister's 
place. Mr. Churchill could no doubt have done so, but he was 
estopped by a variety of circumstances, including the very 
natural jealousy of an old competitor ; and as to the rest of the 
ministry the inexperience of one section was almost equal to 
the inferiority of the other. 

But though capital questions could never be settled in the 
Prime Minister's absence, minor (but exceedingly expensive) 
decisions were taken habitually by heads of departments. The 
large and perhaps necessary liberty of judgment accorded dur- 
ing Mr. George's war control continued to be extended to little 
men who had modelled themselves on him, and believed that, 
in order to be Cromwell, they had only to cultivate Cromwell's 
pimples. It was in vain that the Prime Minister himself ap- 
pealed to these small despots to stop the spending in which 
their importance consisted and to reduce the establishments 
which flattered their self-esteem. The most hopeless case of 
all was that of those honest men who had set their hearts on 
winning imperishable renown as the makers of a new England 
or the founders of a new empire. There were Imperialists 



304 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

like Mr. Churchill who wanted to conquer Russia and make 
the Garden of Eden once more "God's own country," with the 
added advantage of British protection. There were business 
giants like Sir Eric Geddes who wanted to see every railway, 
road, dock, canal, and power-house in Britain under the nod 
of one omnipotent expert in Whitehall. There were liberals 
like Dr. Addison and Mr. Fisher, with enthusiasm for houses 
and schools. There were Conservatives who wanted to turn 
good pasture into possibly indifferent corn land. For every 
Liberal scheme there had to be a corresponding Conservative 
scheme, or Sir George Younger's cohorts would murmur. For 
every Conservative scheme there had to be a Liberal scheme, 
or Mr. George's personal followers would wail. Officially 
all this was called Reconstruction. Unofficially most of it was 
called Waste. 

But, extravagantly costly as were the plans for building the 
New England, the New England declined to be built. Mr. 
George had promised to land fit for heroes ; the heroes were in 
waiting, but where was the land in its fitness ? Mr. Chesterton 
once said that a great politician has but two speeches. One, 
which may be full of imaginative vigour and picturesque charm, 
is delivered before an election and sets forth what is to be done. 
The other, which may be a miracle of remorseless logic, is de- 
livered after the election, and proves conclusively that nobody 
but a fool could expect such wild promises to be fulfilled. A 
speech somewhat of the latter kind was that which Mr. George 
extended over some three hours just before the August ad- 
journment. Sir Auckland Geddes ^ had talked about a certain 
"box" in which the secrets of the government's policy had been 
bestowed. Whether it were like Pandora's, and the plagues had 
already escaped to distribute themselves in the government 
departments, was never clearly shown, but Mr. George, rum- 
maging at the bottom of it, managed to extract a few stray 
fragments of hope. His tone, however, was in the main both 
pessimistic and reproachful. He savagely ridiculed that idea 
of a good time coming, of what Carlyle would have called a 
"lubber-land" of less work and thicker pig's wash, which he 

^Then holding several offices, now Ambassador at Washington. 



DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 305 

had himself done so much to foster. The good time could only 
be more realised by more production. But there had been a 
"sensational decrease in output" in every branch of industry 
except agriculture. We were spending more ; we were earning 
less. This was perfectly true; but it could be retorted that the 
government, with its inflations, its subsidies, its costly conces- 
sions to labour, its expensive and unproductive schemes, its 
buyings of present ease at the expense of the future, had in 
no small degree stimulated the general high living, low effi- 
ciency and want of thrift. 

Mr. George's final appeal was for no criticism and "trust in 
the man at the wheel." In one of his less happy metaphors he 
compared himself to the captain of a boat in the heavy swell 
which persists after a great tempest : — 

"Navigation is difficult and dangerous under these circum- 
stances. Some seek to help; some lie prostrate and weary. 
Some try to upset the boat, either because they dislike the 
steersman, or want to steer themselves, or because they prefer 
some crazy craft of their own. With a clear eye and a s'teady 
hand and a willing heart, we will row through into calmer and 
bluer waters, but we must know where we are rowing. The 
government have done their best to give a direction. Let all 
who will man the boat and save the nation." 

If the situation of the nation were really that of this re- 
markable craft, and its skipper were really as helpless as Mr. 
George suggested, the only proper comment was clearly that 
of the passenger in The Tempest, "Our case is miserable." A 
less literal criticism, however, was inclined to fasten on one 
point — did the steersman know where he wanted to steer? 
Had he any notion where to find the "calmer and bluer waters," 
or — more to the point still — the new land fit for heroes of 
which he had professed to be the Columbus? Some people 
were certainly blaming the government. Some, Mr. George 
said, were inclined to blame Providence itself. Both classes, 
it would appear to be his view, were equally unreasonable. 

The effect of this speech was to suggest a waning belief in 
the possibilities of social reform. But a few weeks later, at the 



306 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

City Temple, we find Mr. George in the old bright manner. 
"Slums will have to go. I hope the great armaments will dis- 
appear. ... I look forward to seeing waste in every shape and 
form disappear, and a new Britain spring up, freed from ignor- 
ance, insobriety, penury, poverty, squalor, and the tyranny of 
mankind over man. . . . There are men who seem to imagine 
that I have accepted the position of leading counsel for the 
old order of things. Rather than do that I would throw up my 
brief." 

Was this a hint to less advanced colleagues? Was it some 
momentary idea of dissolution, disentanglement, and a whirl- 
wind election campaign on the old model? Or was it simply 
that Mr. George, finding himself among old friends, spoke 
almost subconsciously in the old tones? Whatever the case, 
he was quickly brought to earth by the tyranny of one part of 
mankind over another, or in other words by the railway strike 
of tlie Autumn of 1919. Vanished at once was the dreamer of 
new worlds ; and in his place stood the adroit tactician who, 
even if he might be a little flurried with apprehensions of Bol- 
shevism, grasped at once the opportunity of making a little 
advertisement out of that bogey. 

The strike was "engineered," he telegraphed to his Carnar- 
von constituents, for "subversive ends" ; it was a "challenge 
thrown down to society as a whole" which the government was 
bound to accept, and it would meet the blow with "all the re- 
sources of the State." As a sober matter of fact, the "anarchist 
conspiracy" was ended by a commonplace compromise on hours 
and wages; but the effect of Mr. George's apocalyptic lan- 
guage, and of the vast arrangements which had been made in 
advance to meet a transport break-down, was to suggest that a 
real victory had been obtained over the Lenins who carry our 
golf -sticks and the Trotskys who look suspiciously at our sea- 
son-tickets. In the glow of this triumph over the forces of evil 
the public was ready to pay more for their tickets. As of old 
"the interests concerned" were not unsatisfied, and the public 
was so grateful to be able to travel once again that it seemed 
unworthy to discuss the price of the privilege. 



DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 307 

The settlement of the railway strike marked the end of the 
most threatening phase of the labour troubles. With parlia- 
mentary criticism, such as it was, suspended, and labour agi- 
tation pausing to gain its second wind, the Prime Minister 
might have enjoyed some months of comparative quiet. But 
as the Summer of 1919 advanced it became evident that Ireland 
could no longer be neglected. 

A short summary of Mr. George's Irish policy is necessary 
for the comprehension of the situation. He had been chosen 
by Mr. Asquith, after the rebellion of 1916, to negotiate the 
settlement which the government considered still possible, and 
more than ever desirable, because the existing machinery of 
Irish government had broken down. The selection was not al- 
together happy. Mr. George, who was apparently not vividly 
interested, contented himself with taking up the old idea of 
partition, the Home Rule Act to come into force immediately, 
and six of the Ulster counties to be excluded from its scope. 
But, as sometimes happens, he did not succeed in conveying to 
the Irish parties exactly what was in his own mind. The 
Nationalists gathered that partition was to be a temporary 
measure, "for the duration of the war," the Unionists that it 
was to be permanent. When the misunderstanding was made 
evident, it also became clear that no settlement could be reached, 
and things were allowed to drift for many months. 

When he became Prime Minister, however, Mr. George made 
another bid for Irish good-will by freeing a large number of 
Irishmen who had been imprisoned or interned after the insur- 
rection. But arrests were resumed in the course of a few weeks, 
and the Sinn Fein party, which, from being a purely academic 
body, had risen to political prominence on the morrow of 
"Easter Week," won its first by-election almost immediately 
afterwards. The Nationalist party, seeing danger to its very 
existence, if it remained inactive, now began to press strongly 
for the establishment of the "free institutions" Ireland had been 
promised; and after a second Sinn Fein success Mr. George 
seems to have been seriously impressed by Mr. John Red- 
mond's argument that the constitutional movement was being 
killed, and that he would soon have to "govern Ireland by the 



808 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

naked sword." He therefore submitted two alternative pro- 
posals; immediate Home Rule plus partition, or "a convention 
of Irishmen of all parties for the purpose of providing a scheme 
of Irish self-government." The Nationalists accepted the lat- 
ter alternative. Sinn Fein refused its co-operation; the Ulster 
Unionists accepted only with the reservation that they were 
not to be bound by any of the convention's findings; and the 
want of any settled convictions on the part of the government 
— or rather, perhaps, the presence of two sets of mutually de- 
structive convictions — was a handicap. 

Nevertheless the convention produced a distinct improve- 
ment of atmosphere ;^here were signs of a revulsion from the 
extreme doctrines of Sinn Fein; and in the Spring of 1918 
there appeared sufficient prospect of a settlement on the old 
lines of Home Rule to make Sir Edward Carson decide to leave 
the government. But the malign fate which dogs all attempts 
at Irish appeasement was not idle. On April 9, 1918, the 
very day on which the report of the convention was laid on 
the table of the House of Commons, proposals were made for 
extending compulsory military service to Ireland. This settled 
the settlement. The fortunes of Sinn Fein were made in a 
single day. The Nationalist party, which (as Mr. George 
was careful to point out in making a good debating point 
against Mr. Dillon) had accepted the right of the Imperial 
Parliament to legislate for Ireland on matters of Imperial 
concern, was killed. The Irish peasants, inflexible in their 
opposition to forced service in an army which stood in their 
tenacious memories as the instrument of English domination in 
Ireland, went over bag and baggage to Sinn Fein. At the 
election seventy-three Sinn Feiners, pledged not to take their 
seats in an assembly they repudiated as alien, were returned, 
and southern Ireland was practically disfranchised. Lord 
French was appointed viceroy, and Mr. Redmond's prediction 
of rule of the naked sword was fulfilled to the letter. 

For a time the Prime Minister remained uninterested. Ire- 
land was still one of the departmental jobs. As late as June, 
1919, he declared that he could do nothing because of the in- 
tense opposition of Ulster to Home Rule. But two circum- 



DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 309 

stances contributed to compel his reluctant attention. One 
was the effect of the campaign conducted in the United States 
by Mr. de Valera, the Sinn Fein "president." It was clear 
that British policy in Ireland must be justified, or that the 
dream of close co-operation in world aflfairs with the United 
States must be abandoned — a serious matter in view 
of the extent to which the great Republic was now the creditor 
of Great Britain. Not less grave was the fact that Ireland 
was plainly reverting to savagery, and that every week dimin- 
ished the effective power of the Dublin government. In Decem- 
ber an attempt was made on the life of Lord French, and at 
the very end of the session Mr. George announced a policy for 
Ireland. 

Ireland, he explained, was to have not one Home Rule 
parliament but two. So far, in all plans of exclusion, it had 
been understood that the North-Eastern counties would be 
ruled from Westminster, and it could always be argued that 
the time would come when the Ulster members, tired of being 
an unconsidered body in a House of Commons, wearied of 
Irish affairs, would of their own motion seek union with their 
fellow-islanders. But a Belfast parliament must, it would 
seem, tend to permanent separation. True, there was "ma- 
chinery" for common action and even for eventual union, but 
to a southern Irishman it would appear that the whole "drag" 
must be against, and not for, the realisation of his dream of one 
self-governing Irish community. 

For the rest Mr. George warned the Irish to abandon vain 
expectations. The land which by its power had destroyed the 
greatest military empire in the world would not "quail before 
a band of wretched assassins." To a British audience, un- 
aware of the change since 1914, this had the right sound. But 
the speech merely showed that the Prime Minister himself did 
not appreciate the position. He was still thinking in terms 
of the old Home Rule. His plan might have formed the basis 
of settlement in 1914. But five years of neglect and misman- 
agement, of almost criminal tactlessness, of innocent stupidity 
and occasional breaches of faith, of alternate repression and 
concession, had done their work, and at the end of 1919 such 



310 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

a measure in no way corresponded to any Irish reality. In 
1916 the Irish people had seen certain of their countrymen, of 
pure life and high intellect, shot as traitors to the British crown. 
The British government could not be blamed for shooting 
them; to even a liberal-minded Briton they were wicked and 
wanton disturbers of the peace. Nor did the constitutional 
Home Rulers make unreasonable claims for these men; they 
generally acquiesced in the necessity for some severity, merely 
adding "The pity of it." Thus Mr. Dillon, with only a super- 
ficial inconsistency, could condemn the rebellion, and declare 
his pride in the rebels. Southern Irishmen in general, omitting 
the condemnation, indulged the pride and the sorrow. To 
them the sufferers were simply patriots and martyrs. Such 
emotions might have passed had Mr. Asquith's plan succeeded ; 
they were given permanence by what followed. The National- 
ists who had sadly acquiesced in the measures of repression 
and punishment became almost traitors in Irish eyes; to the 
men who stood for Irish nationality without qualification was 
transferred all the fierce passion and stubborn courage which 
had animated the century long fight against the Union. That 
nothing might be lacking to stimulate ardour, there was the 
spectacle of the Peace Conference. In 1919 Czechs, Poles, 
and Jugo-Slavs were granted their liberties by a council on 
which a leading and most conspicuously idealistic member was 
the head of the British government which had denied a similar 
boon to Ireland. If self-determination was to be a principle 
for the Continent, where no perfect racial or geographical 
frontiers existed, how could its application be refused to an 
island so completely marked by nature and culture as separate 
from Great Britain? 

Such was the spirit a combination of circumstances had 
engendered in a majority of southern Irishmen — a spirit quite 
inexplicable to all who think of Ireland as a number of rather 
backward counties separated from England by the sea. It 
was a spirit which Mr. George, as a minister of the crown, 
had every title to dislike, but which, as the son of a small na- 
tion, he should have understood. As a statesman, also, he 
should have grasped much sooner than he did the true nature 



DEMOBILIZATION PROBLEMS 311 

of the military problem involved in a policy of repression, while 
as a professor of "mass psychology" he should have been free 
from an illusion as to the effect of that kind of "strong" action 
v^^hich was, under the secretaryship of Sir Hamar Greenwood, 
to make British "rule" in Ireland a mere nightmare of anarchy. 
Yet there were excuses in plenty. The Prime Minister was 
enormously overworked. He was indifferently served. He 
was handicapped by his old lack of interest in Irish rights and 
wrongs, to which was added a natural resentment of Ireland's 
attitude during the war. He was only too ready to believe one 
set of advisers who told him that only a little more force was 
wanted to subdue the "gunmen." He was only too ready to 
believe the other who whispered that all would be put right 
when the "murder gang" was conquered, at little or no advance 
in the price of 191 4. Between these two opinions he remained 
in oscillation, sometimes uneasy, sometimes complacent, until 
a day came when men everywhere ceased to talk about the Irish 
question, and called it by a blunter name. 



CHAPTER XXI 

DECAY OF THE COALITION 

ONE of the most gruesome of the tales of Edj^ar Allan Poe 
describes a iiiosincric experiment made on a man on the 
very point of death. l>y the potency of certain passes he was 
kept for seven months in apparent trance, able to speak intel- 
lif^ibly and move feebly, and presentini^ somethini^ of the ap- 
pearance of the living. But all the time he was deatl, and when 
at last the spell was reversed his body liquefied, into almost 
instantaneous putrefaction. 

As an illustration of the state of politics under the Coalition 
the parallel is doubly inexact. Those who watched Mr. Valde- 
mar's body were aware that they were not witnessing the 
phenomena of life. Nobody can say with certainty when 
vitality departed from Mr. George's Coalition. Mr. 
Valdemar's final dissolution came duly with the end of the 
story. The dissolution of Mr. George's Coalition is still to 
come as these pages are written. Otherwise the tale fairly il- 
lustrates perhaps the most astounding example of the power of 
a vivid personality to defy the natural processes of political de- 
cay. The feat was probably not worth the pains. It might 
have been nuich better had nature and the undertaker been at 
liberty to complete their respective tasks. But considered 
merely as a feat, it commands the admiration of stupor. 

Up to the end of 191 9 it can be said with confidence that 
there was life in the Coalition. He who professed loyalty to it 
could point, if to no fixed principles, at least to certain definite 
ideas. He could say that, as regarded foreign affairs, he was 
for the firm maintenance of relations with our late Allies, and 
hostile to every infiuence, German, Bolshevist, or whatever it 
might be, which threatened the security of the settlement of 

312 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 813 

Versailles, or the safety of any state created under it. At 
home he could say that he wanted — or was reconciled to — cer- 
tain measures of "reconstruction" which called for large state 
expenditure, both of money and of bureaucratic energy, on 
activities so far left to private enterprise. But during the 
period subsequent to the end of 1919 this Coalitionist, whether 
Liberal or Conservative, could give no rational account of his 
beliefs. He could only describe himself as a follower of the 
Prime Minister. 

We may summarise by saying that before the end of 1919 
a wrong vote might be given, but it was given with some sort 
of reason; after 1919 a right vote might be given, but it was 
given without any sort of reason, save that the Prime Min- 
ister (by whatever impulse he himself were moved) would 
have it so. In the first year of the new parliament it was 
necessary for a minister to maintain a certain show of con- 
sistency; afterwards he might (and often did) jeer at the very 
Bill he had in charge without the smallest peril to its passage 
into law. For in truth the Coalition was either dead, and 
only maintained in the appearance of life by the master mes- 
merist, or it was suffering the languor of mortal sickness. 
There remained a certain reaction to stimulus, as there is even 
in a severed worm, a certain sensitiveness to conditions, as a 
nearly dead crayfish will show when thrust in hot water. In 
the Coalition's case hot water, in sufficient quantity, led to 
feeble convulsive movements. Much talk in the newspapers 
about waste, the loss of a middle-class constituency, would pro- 
duce a tremor or two. But there were none of the recog- 
nisable phenomena of life. The Coalition had lost not only 
the power of action ; it was even without the first mark of 
the living creature — the gift of recognising the nature of 
things. It passed with equal readiness a Bill for doing a par- 
ticular thing and a Bill to prevent that particular thing being 
done. It obediently hustled through an indispensable measure 
at Christmas, and with cheers affirmed the urgent necessity 
of repealing the same measure six months later. 

One thing connected with the Coalition, however, retained 
a conscious and indeed vehement life. From the first the Con- 



314 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

servative right wing had been attached ratlier than incor- 
porated. Its members had sullenly accepted what appeared to 
be the inevitable, sorrowful because of their great possessions, 
but on the whole hopeful that the loin of Mr. George would 
be more slender than the little finger of some British Lenin. 
But as the fear of Bolshevism diminished their dislike and 
distrust of his leadership increased; the apparent certainty 
of being slowly bled to death appeared more alarming than the 
remote possibility of violent confiscation; and by the end of 
192 1 the Conservative right wing might almost be reckoned 
a separate party, poorly led, deficient in parliamentary talent 
and general distinction, but far from negligible, if only be- 
cause, in a parliament where but a very few people knew what 
they wanted, it at least knew what it did not want. It did 
not want the Prime Minister. 

From the first Mr. George's system had partaken of the 
character of a dictatorship. When the new House of Com- 
mons, after a few feeble efforts to check (or rather to under- 
stand), the actions of the government, fell into the condition 
of trance described, the decision of public affairs rested more 
than ever with the Prime Minister and a small knot of his 
intimates, and the practical limitations on their power were 
only three — 

(i) The fear of "direct action" by labour; 

(2) limits in the capacity or forbearance of the taxpayer; 

(3) the possibility of decay proceeding so far in the Coali- 
tion as to make it impossible for its various parts to hang 
together. 

Apprehension on these three points, varying in degree with 
changing circumstances, are the clue to most things that con- 
cern us in the confused story of 1920 and 1921. 

The state of the Coalition was a constant source of anxiety 
to its chiefs. That it should continue inert, uncritical, mind- 
less, was well enough; but what if it visibly died and dissolved? 
Early in 1920 Mr. Barnes and Mr. Roberts, who had main- 
tained the fiction of Labour co-operation long after the reality 
had departed, left the ministry, and their secession, practically 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 315 

unimportant, produced two indirect effects of some interest. 
Liberalism and Conservatism being now the sole remaining 
elements, the question naturally arose whether they could, in 
the political slang of the moment, be "fused." Lord Birken- 
head ^ had publicly recognised the "invertebrate" character 
of the Coalition, recommending the formation of a "national" 
or "centre" party; and matters went to the length of a meeting 
of Liberal ministers to consider the arguments in favour of 
organic union with the other party. No agreement was 
reached, however, and Mr. George set aside the idea. Fusion, 
he said, was a bad word, but "closer co-operation" was needed 
in the constituencies. 

On both sides, indeed, there were very strong practical ob- 
jections to amalgamation. The importance of the numerically 
insignificant and intellectually undistinguished Liberals must 
diminish considerably if they were absorbed, since Mr. George, 
as leader of a single party, could not be expected to show 
absurdly undue preference to those who had been his special 
followers. On the other hand, the Conservatives were by no 
means inclined to make those sacrifices in seats and patronage 
which might be demanded of them through the partiality of the 
Prime Minister. 

There remained the point of view of Mr. George himself. 
Fusion meant burning his boats ; it meant in practice, what- 
ever gloss might be put on it, that he must become a Conserva- 
tive leader. He must adopt and adhere to a certain line of 
thought, and (what was even more to the point) a certain tone 
and temper. Mr. George has always declined to confine him- 
self within any dogmatic ring-fence; he likes to pick and 
choose his opinions from everywhere, and could hardly be 
imagined guiding himself by the oracles of even the most 
broad-minded Toryism. But this difficulty, however serious, 
was less an obstacle than the mere strain of acquiring the 
accent of Toryism. 

It has not been sufficiently remarked that one of Mr. 
George's greatest strengths is his unashamed naturalness. A 

*Sir Frederick Smith ("F. E.") had become Lord Chancellor under this 
style. 



816 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

very chameleon in exterior things, he is at bottom stubbornly 
consistent. He has chang-ed sides and opinions, but he has 
never changed himself. His style has developed, but it is in 
essence the style of the "Brutus" of eighteen; he has never 
thought it worth while to defer to the taste which finds some- 
thing tawdry here and something forced there; this is his 
natural utterance, and the people can take it or leave it; he 
will have no other. His prejudices have been softened by time 
and experience, but they remain a part of him; scratch the 
friend and patron of many millionaires deeply enough, and 
you shall find very much alive the boy who knew poverty and 
the proud man's contumely. His early scorn of rank that is 
but the guinea's stamp has not prevented him creating a for- 
midable new aristocracy, but no man could be less impressed 
by titles to precedence and more ready (according to his 
lights) to recognise titles to respect. He will fail to answer 
a duke's letter just as cheerfully as he omits to acknowledge 
a nobody's; and the rich men to whose society he is rather 
conspicuously partial have to accept his companionship on his 
own terms. On the other hand, there is none so poor who 
cannot be sure of a pleasant word, and (if not bankrupt of wit 
as well as purse) of something more. 

When he entertains or is entertained Mr. George generally 
arranges to be called on the telephone at stated intervals. If 
the company be dull, he discovers at the first ring, that affairs 
of state have unhappily curtailed his pleasure. H the company 
be agreeable, he may await the second ring, and it is eloquent 
of much that he is more likely to ignore the first summons 
when enjoying a quiet chat with nobody in particular than 
when surrounded by pompous notables. 

To "society" he will have nothing to say, and the freshness, 
physical and mental, which has survived so much exhausting 
experience is due, not only to his habit of leaving detail to 
men of detail, but to his fixed resolution not to endure the 
slavery of "moving" in certain "circles." Not without a cer- 
tain appreciation of magnificence, not insensible to the delicate 
flattery of a high-born hostess's attention, the spell soon fails, 
and he has never taken to the kind of life to which for the first 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 817 

forty years of his life he was almost a complete stranger. He 
plays golf with Lord Riddell because he likes golf, and is fond 
of Lord Riddell; if either like were wanting Lord Riddell 
would have to golf without him. He goes to certain country- 
houses because the hosts or the amusements or the company 
promise to please him. No imaginable horse-power, wild or 
otherwise, will take him where he is likely to be wearied, and 
it is to be remarked that, while he has no objection to the 
society of the peers he has made, or the peers he intends to 
make, he is never heard of among the "backwoodsmen" or the 
squirearchy. H he thought of cultivating them, the hedge- 
breaking lad of Llanystumdwy, the poacher-defending young 
solicitor of Criccieth, would rise from their graves — and very 
shallow is their resting-place — in protest. 

In short Mr. George has remained, through all changes, in 
essentials what he was — not, indeed, a "child of the people," 
but the "cottage-bred" son of an ambitious middle-class man, 
who has been most of his life a rebel against all that the more 
vital element in Conservatism stands for. He can become 
sworn brother to essentially middle-class men like Lord Birken- 
head or Mr. Bonar Law. But he finds no joy in exploring the 
recesses of the rural mind, and, dearly as he loves office, he 
would probably resign it to-morrow if the condition of his 
remaining were that he should listen half an hour a day to 
even Lord Birkenhead's talk about hunting. Nor can he be 
unmindful of the fate of Mr. Chamberlain, who missed the 
highest by identifying himself with a party for co-operation 
with which he was temperamentally unfitted. Mr. George, it 
is probable, fully recognises that his own personality, intact and 
unspoiled, is his best asset, and is determined to keep it. li 
he is ever to lead the Conservative party, it must be on his own 
terms. The party must be fitted to him, not he to it; and if 
any spirit is to be broken, it must be its, and not his. 

Whatever the motive, he now decided in no way to commit 
himself, and though, during many months, he said things that 
might raise the hope that he had decided to throw in his lot 
with Conservatism, he contrived always to say other things 
which depressed such expectations; and meanwhile almost 



318 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

ostentatiously expressed his readiness for retirement. Thus, 
at a meeting of Coalition Liberals on March i8, 1920, he 
said : — 

"Personally, I am not concerned with the future. I have 
had fifteen years of the hardest work almost any man ever had, 
in every kind of office and in every kind of weather, and, if 
any change in the political conditions could give me a respite, 
I would rejoice in it." 

His whole tone about this time was the plaintive expos- 
tulatory. "You have no idea what it is to run a government," 
he told a hungry deputation, "with the whole of the news- 
papers of the kingdom screaming about your extravagance, 
and a great outcry about increase of taxation." The govern- 
ment, indeed, was between two fires. The numerous subsidies, 
direct and indirect, had partially and temporarily obscured the 
fact that, as after all wars, the main part of the bill must be 
paid by those who toil. If the cruel truth were suddenly re- 
vealed in the most practical form, there might be serious 
trouble. But while the withdrawal of palliatives involved the 
risk of working-class unrest, their continuance imposed an 
intolerable burden on the taxpayer. As usual the government 
pursued a purely opportunistic policy. Mr. George talked 
about "fighting autocracy," — "whether of an aristocracy or of 
a trade union" — but he took no measures seriously calculated 
to displease labour until the middle-class electors showed that, 
whatever sacrifices they might be prepared to make to get the 
country out of its difficulties, there must be some term to the 
vast expenditure needed merely to continue a pretence. "Great 
is bankruptcy," says Carlyle, rejoicing that in the end it 
abolishes unrealities. It needed some warning that, as Mr. 
Chamberlain expressed it, the country was "heading straight 
to bankruptcy," to determine the government to put an end 
to the artificial encouragements and restrictions set up during 
the war. 

The reactions of the government to these two fears — the 
fear of Bolshevism and the fear of bankruptcy — are illustrated 
by contrasting the record of 1920 with that of 192 1. At the 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 319 

bej:^inninp^ of the former year the note was still Reconstruction, 
and the government was Ijusily occuj)ie(l with iiills to fulfil 
various pledges of the "Land for Heroes" scheme, the list 
including that Agriculture 15ill which, giving guaranteed prices 
and security of tenure to the farmer, a minimum wage to the 
labourer, and authority over cultivation to the government 
was to change the face of rural England. The year 192 1 saw 
the destruction of this and other measures, doomed because 
of their cfjst. Various ministries were abolished; Sir Eric 
Geddes' "grandiose" Ministry of Transport was rerlnced to a 
small sub-department; the new Minister of Agriculture cheer- 
fully tore up the plans he had advocated as a subordinate ; and 
Dr. Addison's housing scheme was so drastically cut that, after 
a little hesitation, he decided to resign; and a long friendship 
was ended by Mr. George's ironic congratulations on the ap- 
plause the resigning minister received from the r)pj)osition. 
"There is always," he said, "a plentiful supply of veal for the 
returned prodigal." Dr. Addison's departure from the 
"Ministry of Health" — a monument to Mr. George's singular 
passion for calling old things by new names — marks the end 
of the Reconstruction period. A little more than two years 
after parliament had begun the consideration of the "hapj)ier 
England" programme, scarcely a fragment of it remained. 

One measure of retrenchment early in 192 1, the "decontrol" 
of the coal trade, led to a three months' stoppage which gravely 
increased the evils of a general depression of trade, and also 
the widespread unemployment which had been first forced on 
the attention of the government by riots in Whitehall in the 
early Winter of the preceding year. Mr. George elected to 
stand firm ; declined to settle on the usual terms of expensive 
compromise ; and made elaborate precautions to preserve peace 
and carry on es.sential services in the event of the miners being 
joined by the railwaymen and transport workers. At the 
critical moment the "Triple Alliance" of labour failed, and 
the ultimate failure of the miners, thus assured, encouraged the 
Prime Minister to dismiss his worst fears. Relieved from the 
immediate dread of labour, he was the more accessible to the 



320 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

economist arguments, and in the Autumn of 1921 took the 
curious step of appointing a committee of business men, under 
the chairmanship of Sir Eric Geddes, to perform a task which 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer was apparently unable to 
accomplish, namely, the control of departmental expenditure. 
The committee's findings suggested relatively immense econ- 
omies. But it was one thing to indicate counsels of perfection 
and quite another to enforce them. The system which Mr, 
George had created had grown too strong for him to control, 
and the departments, taking things into their own hands, did 
merely what they considered necessary to placate public opin- 
ion for the time being. 

Two things were made evident — the first that no radical 
reform was possible until either the realities of cabinet gov- 
ernment had been restored, or a really efficient form of dic- 
tatorship had taken the place of the Georgian system; the 
second that the only possible check on the government was the 
direct pressure of public opinion. The House of Commons 
showed itself incapable, in this as in other matters, of acting 
for the people, or even of interpreting their thoughts. The 
mere fact that it could tamely agree to the appointment of a 
committee of outsiders to exercise that check on expenditure 
which is the one great function of the elective chamber was 
sufficient evidence of the degradation of the House, as well 
as of its impotence. If any other testimony were wanted, it 
could be found in the indifference afterwards shown to the 
absolutism of individual departmental ministers. 

In these domestic matters the Prime Minister was only in- 
termittently interested. Most of his time was spent in going 
to, coming from, and staying on the Continent, and his oc- 
casional sojourns in London were mainly connected with party 
affairs or enforced by some emergency caused by the failure 
of his caretakers. A slightly increased concern was necessi- 
tated after the resignation * of that model "Deputy Prime 
Minister," Mr. Bonar Law, whose departure forced tears from 

*In March, 1921. 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 321 

the eyes of one who, whatever his general emotional facility, 
is much less addicted in public to the melting mood than the 
intellectually frigid Mr. Asquith, or even than the Caesarian 
Mr. Churchill. Mr. Chamberlain, who succeeded Mr. Law, 
had both qualities and defects which forebade so complete a 
subordination of personality. 

In the main, however, Mr, George was still able to indulge 
fully his passion for picnic diplomacy. In this department he 
was, like his ministers at home, chiefly engaged in undoing 
what he had helped at great cost and labour to achieve. In 
1919 he had described the Peace, in which "everybody had 
helped," as "a good Peace, good for everyone but the Ger- 
mans, and really it is good for them." ^ He had also 
called it "a great Peace," "a very just Peace," *'a righteous 
Peace," and "a Peace charged with hope." ^ But a few months 
later these views were considerably changed, and the history 
of the numerous conferences which ended in "perfect accord" 
(invariably followed by an interchange of inspired press re- 
criminations on both sides) is, for the greater part, the history 
of Mr. George's attempts to water down this Treaty which, 
while not vindictive, was to "vindicate justice." ^ There were 
incidental sensations, such as that rather needlessly created 
over the temporary French occupation of Frankfort, in an- 
swer to a German infraction of the Treaty by the movement 
of troops into the Ruhr Valley. Of a more serious nature 
was the complaint of the British Government concerning the 
French recognition of General Wrangel, the last of the Russian 
anti-Bolshevik adventurers, and that of the French Govern- 
ment concerning a peremptory note addressed by Mr. Lloyd 
George to Poland. In neither case was the Allied Government 
consulted beforehand. 

These, however, happily proved only passing incidents. The 
real strain on the Entente was the divergence of view between 
Mr. George and successive French statesmen on two subjects 

* To the Mayor of Dover. 

' To the crowd in Downing Street. 

' Speech in the House of Commons, April i6, 1919. 



322 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

— the question of relations with Russia, and that of the per- 
formance by Germany of her engagements under the Treaty of 
Versailles. 

As Mr. George receded from the temper of 191 8, two ideas 
gained ground in his mind. The first was a natural desire 
to hasten the general settlement of Europe, which he conceived 
to be impossible of accomplishment until some sort of tolerable 
relation had been secured with the de facto Russian Govern- 
ment. The second was a desire to reduce the money liabilities 
of Germany to a manageable amount, and thus take a long step 
towards the resumption of normal trade between Great Britain 
and her former enemy. 

On the first question France was naturally prejudiced against 
an arrangement with the Bolsheviks which must mean the total 
loss of the vast sums she had lent to the Czarist Government. 
That she had a perfect right to maintain this view is incon- 
testable ; that she had any reason to complain of Great Britain 
taking another view can hardly be admitted. Regarding any 
military dangers from the Bolsheviks or any military measures, 
direct or indirect, to be taken against them, each power was 
entitled to expect unity of action to be observed. But on the 
question of commercial policy it could hardly be argued that 
the French view should for ever dominate the policy of Great 
Britain. It was open to France to dissent; it was hardly rea- 
sonable that she should expect the British Government to regard 
the non-recognition of French pre-war loans as for all time a 
bar to any kind of British arrangement with Russia. 

On this question, therefore, though it was quite possible 
to argue that Mr. George was under an illusion, that there 
were no "bulging corn bins" in Russia, and no basis existed 
for trade with that unhappy country, he could not be justly 
accused of pursuing separate aims at the expense of an Ally. 
Concerning the Prime Minister's attitude to the Versailles 
Treaty, however, the French were on stronger ground. They 
could argue with some justice that, while it was open to an 
outside critic to say that the Treaty was from the first an im- 
possible one, and that any serious attempt to enforce its pro- 
visions must bring economic ruin to Europe, such a position 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 323 

was not possible to a statesman who had signed the Peace, He 
might be at hberty — at some expense to his reputation — to urge 
modifications on a co-signatory. But he could not justly make 
it a grievance if such arguments were disregarded in the ab- 
sence of any suggestion of compensation. 

Great Britain, by the nature of the case, had almost auto- 
matically obtained satisfaction of her major claims under the 
Treaty. German naval power had been destroyed ; the German 
mercantile marine had been seized; the German colonies had 
been ceded; the special position of Great Britain had been 
recognised in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Palestine. There was 
only left her share in the money indemnity. The total of the 
payments to be made by Germany had not been fixed at the 
Peace Conference, and has never been fixed since; but the 
ratio as between the Allies was determined at Spa in 1920. 
France was to receive 52 per cent of the whole sum, and the 
British Empire only 22 per cent. For France, therefore, the 
question of reparations was doubly important; her need, as a 
devastated country, was greater, and she had much more to 
receive. Great Britain had several reasons for being less 
anxious. Her share was relatively small; she was inclined to 
believe, with Marshal Foch, that "German gold" would prove 
only "monnaie de singe" ; and she had a strong commercial 
interest in the speedy revival of German prosperity. Germany 
could only pay an indemnity in services or goods, but 
"dumping" on the scale necessary would be resented by the 
undersold British manufacturer and workman, while high 
finance was strongly interested in deprecating any further dis- 
turbance of monetary conditions. 

In brief, there was the inevitable difference in the point of 
view of two powers as far removed as might well be in situ- 
ation, tradition, instinct and immediate interest. France, her 
economic strength based mainly on her own land, was not likely 
to be embarrassed by money or money's worth, from whatever 
source; indeed, she wanted very badly all she could get. On 
the other hand, Britain, her economic strength based mainly on 
the power of her people to make things and sell them abroad, 
was almost willing to bribe people to trade with her. France, 



324 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

with a land frontier and a terrible neighbour, wanted a1x)ve 
all security from the military menace, and was continually 
uneasy concerning Germany's refusal to carry out with honesty 
the disarmament provisions of the Treaty ; concerned, more- 
over, lest any money saved on the indemnities should be used 
to restore German mliitary power. England, with no German 
fleet to fear, was naturally apt to think the French fussy and 
over-nervous, perhaps also a little over-bearing. 

Frequent changes in the French Government added to the 
trouble. The unpopularity of the Treaty in France was shown 
in the defeat of M. Clemenceau's candidature for the presi- 
dency, and his fall was followed by a succession of unstable 
administrations, which perished one after another, through 
the suspicion of weakness in insisting on French rights. In 
such circumstances it was not unnatural that the British public 
should be led to conceive of Mr. George as opposing a firm 
but gentle and entirely reasonable resistance of an aggressive, 
vindictive and militaristic France. The impression was 
heightened by the imprudently bitter and sometimes insulting 
tone of a section of the French press, and it was not easy for 
the student of the London newspapers, particularly of those 
which reflected the views of the government, to grasp the 
plain fact that no French statesman had ever sought more than 
the Treaty gave France ; all that was asked was that Germany 
should be compelled to carry out the more essential of her 
engagements, thus enabling France to advance the work of 
European settlement by herself settling down. 

Germany, always hoping for disagreement between the 
Allies, gave small heed to such threats as were from time to 
time perfunctorily put forward concerning penalties for non- 
compliance. Two years after the Treaty had been signed Mr. 
George had to admit that disarmament had been most imper- 
fectly carried out, and the position has since grown rather 
worse than better. On the subject of reparations there have 
been revisions always in favour of Germany, in return for 
promises which have only proved the starting ground for new 
discussions. On the subject of the punishment of war crim- 
inals Mr. George's post-conference attitude has contrasted 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 325 

curiously with his enthusiasm during the election campaign 
and the peace-making. Indeed, on almost every point Mr. 
George has shown himself anxious to moderate the terms 
which he described in 19 19 as just and good for everybody, 
even for the late enemy. Naturally enough he has been com- 
mended for his "return to commonsense" by that section of 
British opinion which was always opposed to indemnities, or 
indeed to any form of penalty. But equally naturally the 
French, who have been generally most concerned in any re- 
missions, have been inclined to ask three questions: — (i) If 
the Treaty is so bad and unworkable, why did Mr. George 
sign it? (2) If it is a great British interest, and indeed the 
interest of the whole world, that Germany should be released 
from her obligations, why should that interest be served at 
the chief expense of France? (3) Is it not a little hard that, 
because France continues to press for rights under the Treaty 
vitally important to her, she should be lectured as if she were 
the only obstacle to the complete appeasement of Europe? 

These facts have to be considered in connection with the 
irritation which the frequent imprudence and occasional bad 
taste of French comment has occasioned in Great Britain. Ad- 
miration of the personal qualities of the Prime Minister, 
approval of the great aims for universal pacification he has so 
eloquently indicated have rather obscured the fact that to a 
Frenchman — even a Frenchman who, like M. Andre Tardieu, 
remains unforgetful of Mr. George's past services and con- 
vinced of his present goodwill to France, — it seems that, if 
the reparation clauses of the Treaty are to be declared impos- 
sible of execution, France should be in some way compensated 
for and secured against the consequences of failure to execute 
them. 

The monotonous spectacle of a passively resisting Germany, 
of an actively protesting France, of an England utterly weary 
and befogged, was occasionally varied by difficulties further 
afield. Thus warlike operations between Poland and the Bol- 
sheviks came in the summer of 1920 to complicate matters, 
and provoked the sole serious evidence on the part of British 



326 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

labour of a disposition to Sovietism. The despatch of British 
troops, and even of munitions to the help of the hard-pressed 
Poles, was opposed by a "council of action" which to some 
bore the aspect of a British Soviet. Fortunately the success 
of the Polish army settled this as well as larger issues, and 
little further was heard of the council of action. 

Another foreign complication was the death of the young 
King of the Hellenes from a monkey bite, the fall of Veni- 
zelos, and the restoration of King Constantine, Despite the 
declaration that the welcomed return of this monarch could 
"only be regarded as ratification by Greece of his hostile acts" 
against the Allies during the war, Constantine enjoyed at least 
the benevolent interest of the Prime Minister in his war with 
the Turks. In January, 1921, Mr. George declared that "the 
Mediterranean was vital to Great Britain," and that the 
"friendship of the Greek people" was wanted; also that the 
Turks were "treacherous," and that he could not deal with a 
"mutinous general" like Kemal Pasha. This patronage of 
Greece led ultimately to the loss to the cabinet, in March, 1922, 
of the pro-Turkish Secretary for India, Mr. Edwin Montagu, 
whose publication of a departmental document strongly trav- 
ersing the policy of the British government was quaintly, if 
with justice, denounced by Mr. George as wholly out of keep- 
ing with the traditions of cabinet unity. 

As 192 1 advanced the Prime Minister became more and 
more impressed with the necessity, not only of a settlement of 
the questions between the Allies and Germany, but of a general 
pacification of Europe, and revived his schemes for calling 
the Bolshevists and Germans into conference. The first step 
to these ends, a conference at Cannes, at the beginning of 
1922, at first promised well, but the downfall of M. Briand, 
the then French Premier, led to its collapse, and also to the 
plan for a defensive Anglo-French "pact," and M. Poincare, 
who became President of the "Council of Ministers," revealed 
a marked preference for the older machinery of diplomacy. 
However, the project of a conference at Genoa, with Bolshe- 
vists and Germans in attendance, was realised, and if circum- 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 327 

stances conspired against the realisation of the rather extrava- 
gant hopes the British pubhc had been encouraged to form 
concerning it, the meeting at least again illustrated the unique 
influence which Mr. George's fame, position and gifts gave 
him in council with European statesmen. 

From participation in the more fruitful negotiations at 
Washington, where Mr. Balfour (soon to be rewarded — or 
punished — by an earldom) was able to conclude a valuable 
agreement with the United States on the Pacific question and 
the limitation of naval armaments, Mr. George was excluded 
by his absorption in the Irish problem. 

The passage of the Home Rule Bill in 1920 had (as might 
have been anticipated) contributed nothing to pacification; 
the only point gained was Ulster's practical admission that the 
blank negative could no longer be maintained. In reply to 
Mr. Asquith, who had suggested that "dominion Home Rule" 
was now the minimum which would suffice, Mr. George pro- 
tested against the "fatal doctrine" that "you should go further 
and give more, not because Ireland needs it, not because it is 
fair to the United Kingdom, but because crime has been more 
successful." He was not to be "bulHed by assassins"; what 
was happening in Ireland was "not war, but murder." Later 
in the year he ridiculed the "little imitation Gladstones" — Sir 
John Simon and others — who criticised the poHcy of reprisals 
which had been adopted under Sir Hamar Greenwood, and in 
rejecting some indirect overtures from Sinn Fein he charac- 
terised them as too much in the tone of one independent 
power to another. He was willing for peace, but violence 
must first cease, and Sinn Fein must first agree to work the 
Home Rule Act. 

Violence did not cease; there was instead a terrible cre- 
scendo of outrage and reprisal. Troops fired on a crowd watch- 
ing a hockey match at Dublin ; the next night a number of 
officers were barbarously murdered in their bedrooms. Sinn 
Feiners ambushed troops in the outskirts of Cork ; as a sequel 
almost the whole of the centre of the city, including the City 
Hall, the Corn Exchange, the Free Library, was burned down. 



328 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

For months an apathetic pubHc watched, with a detachment 
eloquent of the decline of all sense of political values, the drear 
progress of decivilisation. This insensibility was less stoical 
than pathological; when a man is unaffected by the burning of 
his toes we do not admire his bravery in bearing pain, but 
rather feel that he is about to lose his leg, and to many it was 
clear from the indifference shown by the House of Commons 
and the newspapers, that Sinn Fein had only to persist, and it 
must succeed. 

History will no doubt point to Sir Hamar Greenwood's 
administration as snapping the last thread binding England 
and Ireland under the old dispensation. A Liberal member of 
parliament of Canadian extraction, his courage and activity 
were only exceeded by his misunderstanding of the situation. 
He seems to have viewed the Irish troubles as a sort of Red 
Indian rising which could be put down with due use of force 
so long as there was no troublesome public opinion to embar- 
rass its application. A main part of his policy was therefore 
to baffle enquiry, and in this he showed great address. His 
measures could hardly have solved the Irish question. But 
they might quite possibly have quelled the Sinn Fein rebellion 
had there existed in Ireland, outside of Ulster, an active public 
opinion in favour of the government. In fact there was none. 
Even the southern Irish Unionists, having lost all confidence 
in the power and resolution of Great Britain to stand by them, 
were unwilling to take up an attitude which exposed them to 
the risk of actual extermination. The rest of the Southern 
Irish population was cowed by the Sinn Feiners, or sympa- 
thetic with them as to ends, if not as to means, or sullenly 
neutral. Nowhere was there to be found hearty co-operation 
with authority on the part of a large body of the people. 

In such circumstances a comparatively small force was 
unable to keep any semblance of order in a country singularly 
adapted to guerilla operations. In November, 1920, Mr. 
George declared that we had "murder by the throat." Less 
than a year later it was evident that "murder" was less re- 
strained than ever. The King's rule had gradually weakened 
until it might be said hardly to exist over great areas. Pro- 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 329 

tection could not be given to many loyalists, and they were 
forced, however reluctantly, to make terms with Sinn Fein; 
while the fact that matters were on the whole better where 
Sinn Fein held almost undisputed sway, than in the debatable 
grounds alternately over-run by both forces, was not without 
its influence in weakening any internal resistance to the revo- 
lutionists. 

At last, in the early Summer of 1921, Mr. George began to 
realise the true nature of the situation. It was clear that the 
Greenwood plan had failed; the government's grip on the 
throat of murder was even looser than it had been a year or 
two years before; and meanwhile the British name and fame 
had suffered greatly not only in the United States, but in the 
British Dominions overseas. Continuance in that particular 
policy must, it was now seen, ultimately lead to both moral 
and material bankruptcy. For the rest there were but two 
courses. One was to re-conquer Ireland, by regular military 
methods and in fundamental fashion. But the cost of military 
operations on the requisite scale must be enormous, and a 
scarcely less serious consideration was the evident disinclina- 
tion of the British nation for more fighting. Conscription for 
such a purpose was scarcely thinkable; while the price of each 
soldier voluntarily enlisted would be prohibitive. The coun- 
try might, indeed, be roused to a great effort if convinced that 
the only alternative were a literal translation into fact of that 
carelessly repeated scrap of rhetoric, which had done duty 
through thirty-five years of political agitation, "the disrup- 
tion of the empire." But clearly the country was not yet so 
convinced, and could not be so convinced until the aims of 
Sinn Fein had been definitely and seriously formulated. Mr. 
George, therefore, decided on the second course, politely 
called negotiation, impolitely "shaking hands with murder." ^ 

Opportunity was taken of the opening of the Northern 
Irish parliament on June 22nd, 1921, to put in the mouth of 
the King an appeal for a general Irish settlement, and a few 
days later the government set forth concrete suggestions for 

* Sir Henry Wilson, since barbarously murdered, bluntly described the 
Prime Minister's action (to his face) in these terms. 



330 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

a conference to "explore to the utmost" that possibility. Early 
in July a "truce" was arranged; an offer of "full Dominion 
status" to Southern Ireland was made ; and, though it was 
rejected by Mr. de Valera and the Dail Eireann, the Irish 
professed willingness to enter into conversation "on the prin- 
ciple of government by the consent of the governed." 

A long process of manoeuvring for position followed. The 
Prime Minister, who had felt compelled to take a holiday, — 
his first since the outbreak of war, — conducted tlie correspon- 
dence from the heart of the Scottish Highlands, in the inter- 
vals of sitting to a dentist and taking medicines, of which per- 
haps the most efficacious was a Chaplin film brought specially 
up from London. In his search for a "formula" the Prime 
Minister had arrived, by September 9, at the suggestion of a 
conference to ascertain how the "association of Ireland with 
the community of nations known as the British Empire could 
best be reconciled with Irish national aspirations." This invi- 
tation was withdrawn when Mr. de Valera coupled his accep- 
tance with the proviso that the Irish delegates should be rec- 
ognised as the representatives of a sovereign state; but on 
September 29 the formula was varied to mere insistence on 
the unity of the British Empire. Mr. de Valera thereupon 
agreed to "explore every possibility by personal discussion," 
and on October 11 the conference first sat at Downing Street. 

It is unnecessary to trace here the vicissitudes of the dis- 
cussions. Mr. George, with all his dexterity, could not have 
carried them to a successful issue but for the co-operation of 
the Unionist members of his government, who, once converted 
to the policy of conciliation, almost exceeded him in their reso- 
lution to give it effect. Mr. George himself was probably at 
first anxious mainly to justify his past administration in the 
eyes of the nation and the world, and to prove that if an inten- 
sive war must be waged the responsibility was solely Sinn 
Fein's. But as time went on he became impressed by the pos- 
sibilities of a genuine settlement, and from the moment of this 
conviction the "steadiness to pursue ends, flexibility to vary 
means," for which he is remarkable, were fully enlisted on the 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 331 

side of agreement. Ulster, of course, could not be won to the 
proposal of an All Ireland parliament with "special guaran- 
tees," and it seemed at one stage probable that the negotiations 
would be wrecked on this not unreasonable refusal to vary an 
arrangement which, only reluctantly accepted as the lesser of 
two evils, now seemed to the northern population its sole safe- 
guard. The individuality of Ireland, it must not be forgotten, 
was as much a dogma with Sinn Fein as its virtual inde- 
pendence. 

In the end Mr. George presented a pistol to the heads of the 
Irish delegates. In the early morning of December 6 he gave 
them their choice, the immediate resumption of "war" or sig- 
nature of the "Treaty" creating an "Irish Free State" sepa- 
rate from Ulster. Faced with a terrible responsibility, the 
Sinn Fein delegates signed at 2.30 a.m. More than one of 
them afterwards declared that nothing but the thought of what 
refusal might imply to Ireland induced him to put pen to 
paper, and the disclosure of the facts was destined to exercise 
a powerful influence on Irish opinion. The time had probably 
come for decisive action, and Mr. George's instincts for the 
psychological moment are not to be lightly challenged. But 
the subsequent schism in the Dail and the country — ultimately 
enforcing large concessions to Mr. de Valera and the dis- 
senting minority of impenitent republicans — seriously handi- 
capped the Provisional Government of Messrs. Collins and 
Griffith, and indeed threatened to make any kind of govern- 
ment impossible. In Great Britain, however, Mr. George had 
little difficulty in disposing, for the time being, of any oppo- 
sition, "Is it to be laid down," he asked, in defending the 
Treaty before the House of Commons on December 14, "that 
no rebellion is ever to be settled by pacific means? If the 
terms are good, are they never to be negotiated with rebels? 
Whom else could we have negotiated with?" At the Imperial 
War Cabinet, he said, "there were representatives of all the 
Dominions, but there was one vacant chair. . . . Hencefor- 
ward that chair will be filled by a willing Ireland, radiant be- 
cause her wrongs have been settled." 

The "radiance" of Ireland is still one with the "ripe and 



332 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

refreshing fruit" of an earlier period in the orator's life. It 
is unhappily all too clear that a bargain enforced by lawless- 
ness is a very different thing from that which represents con- 
cession to a constitutional demand. But though we cannot yet 
talk, in reference to Ireland, of "permanent solution," we can 
point to something scarcely less decisive, a permanent 
dissolution. 

From the moment that the Unionist leaders concurred in 
Mr. George's retreat from the position of 1920,^ the "too too 
solid" political combination which had been powerful enough 
to forbid every scheme of Irish settlement since 1886, melted, 
thawed, and resolved itself into a dew. Cement might have 
been devised for a mere schism ; but this was no fracture, but 
a chemical change. The whole philosophy of Unionism had 
gone. It had lived on a denial of Irish nationality; it now 
concurred in recognising Ireland as a nation. It had claimed 
always that force, wisely and resolutely applied, was the ap- 
propriate remedy for all Irish discontents, distinct in character 
from English, Scottish, or Welsh discontents. It now ac- 
knowledged that the chief of all Irish discontents was con- 
nected with the desire of Irishmen to create a culture and 
mould a destiny of their own, and that neither repression nor 
pampering could remove that desire. Considering that the 
Unionist chiefs, in arguing for the measures necessary to give 
effect to the Irish Treaty on the side of Great Britain, had 
to demolish every shred of their own case against much less 
fundamental changes in the relations of the two countries, they 
performed their task with great ability, and, it must be added, 
with a magnanimous disregard of personal considerations. 
But they could hardly be surprised or aggrieved if, among the 
men whom they had for years whipped up to frenzy against 
any form of Irish self-government, there were now a number 
who saw in their new open-mindedness only a shameless 
apostacy. 

It is possible that another generation may acclaim Mr. 
George's concession on Irish self-government as more than 

* Speech at Carnarvon, October 9. "Was there ever," he asked, referping 
to Dominion Home Rule, "such lunacy proposed by anybody?" 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 333 

a sufficient set-off to the defects of a system which, however 
well suited to purposes of war, had exposed its weakness in 
three years of peace administration. The philosopher may 
dwell on the singularity that what was denied to the consis- 
tency and earnestness of so many great men was achieved, 
almost as a holiday task, by a statesman who had never given 
any consecutive attention to the Irish question, and whose atti- 
tude to it had always been one of rather fatigued opportunism. 
On the other hand, yet another weary chapter may have to be 
added to the miserable story of Anglo-Irish misunderstanding. 
Prophecy is especially dangerous regarding things Irish, But 
it is fairly safe to say that three definite results will be found 
to have followed the decision of Mr. George to "negotiate with 
rebels." 

The first and greatest result is that in some form or another 
Irish nationality will be recognised by future British Govern- 
ments ; if a positive has not yet been achieved, the whole nega- 
tive has broken down. The second is that the Conservative 
party has to choose between its old leaders and its old phi- 
losophy; it cannot have both. The third is that the Coalition, 
in giving birth to the Irish Free State, signed its own death- 
warrant, though the date of execution was left blank. 

The so-called "Die-Hard" opposition in Parliament was 
negligible. But its strength, as the one quite earnest thing in 
the politics of the moment, was seen when Sir George Younger 
declared in the beginning of 1922 against the early general 
election desired by the Prime Minister, flushed by the results 
of Washington and anxious to make full electoral use of the 
Irish Treaty. The outburst of savage joy when Mr. Montagu 
resigned was something more than a testimonial to the late 
Indian secretary's unpopularity with the Conservative right 
wing ; it was also an advertisement that the Irish Treaty would 
neither be forgiven nor forgotten. The fewness of the mal- 
contents, their lack of any leadership of note, made their artic- 
ulate opposition of little account. But that they, and not the 
Unionist leaders, represei' ■ i fhe basic realities of Conserva- 
tism, may have been the reilection which led that shrewd poli- 



334 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

tician, the Earl of Derby, to decline the post left vacant by Mr. 
Montagu. 

What reflections were Mr. George's when, after patching 
up his weakening ministry, he retired to Criccieth, there to be 
photographed planting potatoes? "II faut cultiver notre jar- 
din." But for his passion for employment, and his sincere 
conviction that he alone could save the country in peace as in 
war, it would be easy to imagine him, like the Roman emperor 
to whom he was compared, telling some restless Maximian — 
Mr. Churchill or another — that there was nothing equal to 
growing prize vegetables. A calm review of the state of the 
national garden might indeed well have inclined one of less 
sanguine nature to compete in future only for the innocent 
triumphs of the local flower show. Disordered, blighted, 
''swarming with caterpillars," it was indeed no encouraging 
spectacle to one who had so sedulously sown it with promises, 
watered it with eloquence, and manured it with gold. Declin- 
ing revenue, inflated expenditure, depressed trade, no trace left 
of the great schemes of reconstruction except the heavy bills for 
the cost of their mere inception, a discontented working-class, 
a middle order apathetic and hopeless under the burden of 
excessive taxation, taking refuge from thought in mere fri- 
volity, even the richest beginning to wonder whether such 
"insurance against Bolshevism" as fifteen shillings in the 
pound taxation were worth while, a House of Lords degraded 
by magnified new creations, a spiritless and discredited 
House or Commons, a cynically distrustful public — such were 
the most obvious results of three years of intense labour. 

There might be some consolations. A period of great dan- 
ger had passed without great disaster; the damage to ma- 
terial interests was not irreparable; the tax collector had not 
yet killed, though he had seriously threatened, that individual 
ambition and energy which, if permitted free scope, will ulti- 
mately restore disordered public finances to health. Abroad 
there was the same limited occasion for congratulation. 
Though the understanding with France had been weakened, 
it had not been destroyed; it was just possible to hope with 



DECAY OF THE COALITION 335 

the idealists that a regenerate Germany would not be tempted 
to reverse the verdict of 1918; the worst dangers in Eastern 
Europe had been averted; in India, Egypt, and elsewhere the 
proverbial luck of the British Empire had so far not altogether 
deserted it ; at Washington able statesmanship, with good for- 
tune, had falsified forebodings of a new armaments 
competition. 

But on the whole a realistic Prime Minister, planting his 
potatoes, could hardly have been exhilarated by a review of 
that phase of Peace Coalition which had just been completed. 
His personal affairs had prospered. As an individual, he had 
been placed in a position of money independence by Mr. An- 
drew Carnegie's legacy of two thousand pounds a year. As a 
servant of the state he was now splendidly housed at Chequers,^ 
and his week-ends among the beechen glories of that Bucking- 
hamshire pleasance might well compensate for any shortcomings 
of Downing Street, which, with its rabbit-warren of huts for 
secretaries and clerks, had shed any pretensions it might once 
have had to be a home. As head of the Coalition his power 
and prestige were apparently higher than at any previous time. 
In neither House could he discern a possible rival ; in the cabi- 
net his authority, if actually not greater than in the days of 
the war, was far more assured. Those of its members who 
were not his creatures were now apparently bound to him by 
the mere law of self-preservation. 

His one complete triumph, indeed, was the personal loyalty 
of a body of men which included many so different in char- 
acter and antecedents. But against this success had to be 
weighed a failure which to a man of his temperament may 
have seemed — if indeed he were objectively minded enough 
to recognise it — more tragic than any disappointment in the 
field of policy or administration. 

His hold on the popular mind had fatally weakened. He 
could still, of course, hold a great meeting entranced. He 
could still play on an audience, whether in the country or the 

* Chequers, which had been given by Lord and Lady Lee of Fareham, to 
be for ever a country house for Prime Ministers, was placed at Mr. 
George's disposal in Jan., 1921. 



336 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

House of Commons, as if it were an instrument. But he no 
longer roused strong emotion in the masses whom the voice of 
the most industrious orator cannot reach. In 1900 the com- 
mon people detested him. In 1909 those who were not be- 
witched were in the main amused by him. In the years be- 
tween 19 14 those who did not execrate idolised him. In 1922 
the general public merely accepted him as part of the fixed and 
apparently unchangeable order of things. He had become an 
institution, and few institutions rouse enthusiasm. People 
were not ungrateful for his war services ; they resented any 
attack or criticism on the ground of anything he had done or 
neglected up to the armistice as if it were something in the 
nature of blasphemy. They were not captious even regarding 
the peace-time dictatorship ; he might not have managed quite 
well, but the task was collossal, and who would have done 
better? They were apparently not anxious for a change; 
change seemed duller even than continuance in routine. They 
were, in a word, not hostile, or unrecognising, or complaining. 
They were simply very tired. 

For once Mr. George had made a mistake in "mass psy- 
chology." He had neglected the sound rule of nott bis in idem. 
During the war his energy had acted on England as a brass 
band on a tired regiment. His mistake after the war was 
that he went on with the dose. He imagined that England 
still wanted waking up. It was a very bad mistake indeed. 
England wanted politically nothing so much as to go to sleep, 
and Mr. George, who could dance gracefully in land reform 
sabots, or tread majestically in quasi-military jack-boots, has 
never had a taste for list-slippers. 



CHAPTER XXII 



AT WORK AND PLAY 



THIS narrative will have failed in its purpose if, in relat- 
ing the acts and illustrating the opinions of its subject, 
it has not also conveyed a definite impression of his personality. 
It may be of advantage, however, to add a few words con- 
cerning some aspects of Mr. George which could not be con- 
veniently treated in the course of so summary a review of so 
crowded a life. 

First as to his physique. He is generally conceived as 
"little," and in fact he is below the medium height ; he stands 
about five feet six and a half inches. But he hardly gives the 
impression of a small man, still less of an insignificant one. 
For attention is at once concentrated on the noble head and 
fine torso, and it is only by degrees that one realises that nature 
has not fully carried out her promising plan for a completely 
splendid human being. One of Gilbert's heroes was fairy 
down to the waist, but his legs were mortal. Mr. George is 
demi-god to the fourth, perhaps the fifth, button of his waist- 
coat, but below that of quite ordinary clay. Every caricaturist 
has insisted on the fact of this diminuendo, and a writer may 
perhaps be excused for mentioning it, even if he does not find 
here a clue to the inconsistencies of Mr. George's complex 
character. 

The first impression of the face at close quarters is its 
health; the skin is tighter, the complexion purer, the whole 
efifect more muscular and virile than photographs or a distant 
view might suggest. The second impression is of great 
strength, and (despite the generally genial expression) of 
some ruthlessness. The head is held with the poise of a fencer, 
and the keen blue eyes express, in the case of a new acquaint- 
ance, a certain challenge that adds to the impression of a life- 

337 



338 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

long duellist to whom it has become a habit never to take it 
for granted that the friend of to-day will not be the enemy of 
to-morrow; one feels the presence of a sceptical vigilance that 
never takes holiday. Those eyes are very wonderful. Some- 
times they express pure fun. Sometimes they are as devoid of 
emotional quality as optical lenses, so completely are they oc- 
cupied in mere seeing. At another time they kindle with the 
wrath of an honestly indignant man ; again they reveal a ten- 
derness which explains why their owner, in some critical mo- 
ments in his own history and the country's, has gained his 
point with solid and stolid business men solely by an appeal — 
but such an appeal! — to "sentiment." Often, on the other 
hand, they suggest little but craft. 

In town Mr. George dresses smartly enough, with a tendency 
to the light grey morning coat and the tall hat ; in winter this 
goes with an astrakhan-collared overcoat. But his heart is not 
in clothes, and whenever he is in a position to loaf he revels 
sartorially in "shapeless idleness" ; his country hats and caps 
are an astonishment, if not a hissing. 

His personal tastes are simple. He cares little for elaborate 
meals and retains the countryman's liking for "high tea." He 
prefers to have people to breakfast rather than to diimer, and 
lunch at lo Downing Street, even when there are guests, is 
a modest aflfair. Though no teetotaller — he has no objection to 
a glass or two of wine — spirits have no attraction for him. 
But he loves a cigar, and still retains a certain affection for the 
pipe. The motor-car is merely a convenience of transport, 
though his taste is here for luxury; he is driven to and from 
Chequers or the golf course in the most expensive thing known 
to the automobile world. For golf he has more passion, but 
after all it is chiefly valued for its effect on fitness and its con- 
venience as lending informality to a talk on politics or things 
connected with politics. And in Mr. George's case everything 
is more or less connected with politics. 

Few living statesmen have read more, despite all that is said 
of his want of interest in literature. He is especially addicted, 
strange to say of one so unhistorical in temperament, to his- 
tory; and has much curious knowledge in unsuspected direc- 



AT WORK AND PLAY 839 

tions. Mention some half-forgotten eighteenth century states- 
man, and you will be struck with the impromptu revelation of 
lore ordinarily associated with specialist study. Mention a 
seventeenth-century poet, and you will find no response, unless 
he happens to have written hymns or affords good political 
quotations that can be applied to-day. An exception to the 
ruling passion might seem to be Mr. George's theological in- 
terest, but probably a good part of his reverence for the great 
preachers of his race may be attributed to the fact that they 
were political chiefs as well as spiritual pastors. A Chequers 
house-party is therefore emphatically political in character; 
and though there may be a multitude of good stories, and many 
clever things may be said, the conversation suffers from a 
certain monotony. So does the company. It is — in the strict- 
est sense — an ad hoc company. Mr. George is too busy a man, 
as well as too much a man of one interest, to waste his sweet- 
ness on an air politically desert. Mr. Asquith found time to 
exchange views on minor poetry with minor poets. Mr. 
George is strictly utilitarian. 

In truth his work leaves him little leisure for anything that 
is not either pure recreation, or only another kind of work. 
For many months on end his routine was something) as 
follows : 

7 a.m. Morning tea, telegrams and urgent despatches. 

8 a.m. Morning papers. 

9.1 5 a.m. Breakfast, generally with a business guest or two. 

10 a.m. Reception of secretaries, ministers, etc. 

11.30 a.m. War Cabinet. 

1.45 p.m. Lunch, usually with official guests. 

3 to 5 p.m. Reserved for deputations. In their absence a 

short rest. 
5 p.m. Second meeting of War Cabinet. 
5.30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Callers on urgent matters. 
8 p.m. Dinner, followed by the evening papers and (when 

possible) some private reading. 
10 p.m. Bed. 

When we add occasional big speeches in the country or the 



340 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

House of Commons, consultation with whips and party of- 
ficials, and telephonic communications with ministers at both 
Houses of Parliament, some estimate may be formed of the 
almost overwhelming burden of war work; and the peace 
brought rather a variation than an alleviation of stress. Ten 
Downing Street has therefore less of the character of a 
home than under any previous occupant, and the small family 
circle is lost in the crowd of functionaries multiplied by the 
peculiar system Mr. George had added to the machinery of 
state. The "two nice boys" to whom Mr. George referred in 
one of his earlier war speeches are seldom seen there. The 
antipathy to politics they felt in their childhood, because par- 
liamentary duties implied their banishment from the pure air 
of Wales, has persisted in manhood, and neither of them takes 
in any material particular after the father. Dame George (or 
Mrs. George as she prefers to be called) conscientiously and 
with success performs all the duties of her position, but has no 
great love for society and is rather timid and defensive in her 
attitude to the great ; Miss Megan Lloyd George, on the other 
hand, enjoys seeing, from her seat on the arm of her father's 
chair, something of how and by whom mankind is governed. 

To all who reach his room at Downing Street, or who are 
privileged to sleep at Chequers, Mr. George shows the same 
frank and easy good-humour, suggesting that he is a man with- 
out secrets. But it has been observed that, though systematic 
reserve may be sometimes overcome, systematic familiarity is 
impregnable ; and this is certainly true of Mr. George. Living 
at times on the most intimate terms with fellow ministers, he 
has never delivered to anybody the keeping of his political 
soul. Mr. Churchill and he were at one time almost brothers, 
and after their temporary estrangement was at an end some- 
thing of the old familiarity was re-established. But there 
were recesses in the Georgian mind, and plans in the Georgian 
pigeon-hole, which no effort of Mr. Churchill could discover. 
Curiously enough, the politician who probably came nearest to 
the real Lloyd George was Mr. Bonar Law. 

For the rest, Mr. George is very fond of the theatre, or at 
least of the lighter forms of dramatic art, and specially favours 



AT WORK AND PLAY 341 

revues. It is a historic fact that he enjoys the cinema humours 
of Mr. Charles Chaphn, and at Sir Phihp Sassoon's place at 
Lympne, where he used to be a frequent visitor, the private 
film installation afforded him amusement. But we have the 
authority of an American expert, that, generally speaking, he 
is "no fan for the flickering celluloid." 

It remains to consider the qualities which have brought the 
Welsh schoolmaster's son and the Welsh shoe-maker's nephew 
to an eminence so great that even such trifling personal facts 
are not without interest. Those who have never considered 
how large an element in success of any kind is mere appetite 
may be disposed to smile when it is suggested that a main 
factor in this wonderful story is simply Mr. George's abnormal 
zest. What, after all, chiefly explains things as various as the 
literary output of Charles Dickens, the marvellous political 
career of Mr. Gladstone, and the resounding success to-day of 
somebody's soap or somebody else's newspapers? We talk 
loosely of genius, exceptional powers of organisation, 
prescience, judgment, and the like, but it may be rationally 
held that the difference between success and failure, or between 
moderate and sensational success, is often accounted for by the 
sheer difference in the capacity of men to get and remain 
interested in what they happen to be doing. Long before the 
young Lloyd George had revealed any extraordinary capacity 
he had given signs of the most voracious appetite for all kinds 
of experience, and if we closely examine his career in all its 
stages we shall be less impressed by any extraordinary superi- 
ority of intellect, than by his power — Dickens's was very like it 
— of throwing all of himself into almost any subject, however 
trivial or apparently dull, which might happen to engage his 
fancy. If he takes up a thing, it is, for the time at least, with 
all his mind and all his strength. 

It is said that just before his resignation Mr. Bonar Law 
was talking about the almost overwhelming difficulties before 
the government. "Life is full of anxieties," he sighed. "Yes," 
exclaimed the Prime Minister. "But it is very interesting." 
To Mr. George the one great fact about life is that it is inter- 
esting. He can feel its tragedy ; he is open to its humour ; he 



342 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

was once, and perhaps still is, an optimist as to its earthly 
possibilities ; absorption in the day's business has not banished 
belief in its higher significance, for though the days of the 
Disciples of Christ now lie very far away he can, as we have 
seen, still find more than an intellectual pleasure in a fine ser- 
mon, and "those incomparable Welsh hymns" can still bring 
"balm to the wounded soul." But the main thing about life 
is after all its inexhaustible interest. It is not only a great 
show, but a great game, and of all joys the greatest is to be a 
chief manager of the show, arranging the exits and the en- 
trances, and a chief player at the game, winning the loudest 
plaudits. 

Appetite, however, has its limitations, like everything else. 
Dickens could not get back, to Pickwick, though he tried ; Lord 
NorthclifTe, having put the whole of himself into Answers, 
as a young man, could not make a new Anszvers in middle life; 
Mr. George has equally found it difficult to return to his early 
loves. It was with but half a heart that he returned as Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer to the Disestablishment enthusiasms 
of his free lance period ; we feel a wholly different quality in 
the social reform apostle of the Budget days and the framer of 
the "land for heroes" policy; we are even conscious of a 
weariness in the would-be "general manager of Europe" that 
was not present when Mr. George, as the ex-Pacificist, first 
tasted the full fascination of high politics. He has, in short, 
the defects of a great quality. Attracted to questions by their 
interest, he is too apt to forget that when they cease to interest 
him they do not cease to be important ; and what he gains by 
the marvellous concentration of energy on a question which 
is "uppermost" is prone to be lost by his weariness of the whole 
subject when it imperiously claims attention no longer. 

Another strength (which is also a weakness in its degenera- 
tion) is the emotionalism which mingles so curiously with the 
trite common-sense of the middle-class man. It is quite im- 
possible that Mr. George's fervours, any more than Mr. Job 
Trotter's tears, can be always genuine. But even Mr. Trotter 
was capable of sincerity, and there has never been lacking to 
Mr. George's sentimentalities a foundation of real sympathy 



AT WORK AND PLAY 343 

with the obviously miserable, of genuine revolt against the more 
theatrical forms of oppression. Unfortunately men so enjoy 
using a special talent that they invariably misuse it, and when 
emotional eloquence comes so easily, and acts so powerfully, 
there must always be a temptation to over-do it, or use it with- 
out justification. Mr. George cannot escape the suspicion of 
sometimes employing a decidedly pious style to advance or dis- 
guise aims which, though not unworthy, are certainly not 
unworldly. It may be fairly claimed for him, however, that if 
he is, perhaps, responsible for introducing a new cant into 
politics, he has also imported a new power. Before his time 
it sufficed in order to prove that all was well with the world, and 
that God was really in his Heaven, that the politician should 
be able to show that there had been no break in the triumphal 
march of statistics. The later Lloyd George, himself quite 
comfortable, has no doubt forgotten much that was very pres- 
ent to an earlier Lloyd George, with recent memories of the 
house-keeping at Llanstumdwy. But it would be unjust to 
take no count of the fact that, though his concrete plans of 
social reform were open to criticism, the spirit which informed 
them was more human than any that had inspired our politics 
since the last embers of the French revolution had been stamped 
out. If there is now, despite all confusions and retrogressions, 
a less brutal valuation of progress, which even the dustiest of 
politicians cannot wholly ignore, it has come through him 
rather than through the professed Socialists, who know nothing 
of emotion. 

His vanity is a strength as well as a weakness. If it makes 
him almost comically sensitive to attack, if it gives him a 
morbid care for his fame, it contributes to his marvellous 
self-confidence; helps him to combat occasional lapses into de- 
spondency, and saves him from that common failing of the 
uplifted middle-class man — a failing from which even Glad- 
stone was not wholly exempt — reverence for mere birth or 
position. He is so aware of his own greatness that he can 
treat all men, or nearly all, with the same tolerant and unad- 
miring good-humour. If he likes the society of a certain kind 
of rich person, it is merely because he finds that kind of rich 



344 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

person either useful or amusing. But he thinks little of him 
on account of his wealth, and nothing of him on account of 
his social status. Pitt, whom Mr. George resembles in his 
theatricalities and his inspirations, was in every way a very 
complete snob, who bowed in the presence chamber till his 
long nose could be seen between his legs. Probably there never 
was a minister so absolutely devoid of snobbishness as Mr. 
George. His sense of human values is not always unimpeach- 
able ; but he does judge men as men — when he does not judge 
them as politicians. 

Much has been said about the marvellous accuracy of his 
intuitions. But here again there are two sides to the question. 
There is a certain kind of stock-broker whose opinion one 
would value highly if one were disposed to what is called a 
"flutter." On questions of a quick rise or a sudden slump he 
is infallible; but beware of his counsel concerning a safe and 
profitable "lock-up." Mr. George's intuitions are more of 
the short-date than of the dependable long-distance kind. Dur- 
ing the war his power of guessing a few weeks ahead of the 
fact was almost as useful as it was uncanny; but in dealing 
with the problems of peace, domestic and foreign, his inability 
to look well ahead has been quite equally marked. Even in 
reading a political situation he is by no means infallible, and 
his miscalculations in the region of finance have been ca- 
lamitous, while his "unexpected solutions" seldom solve for 
very long. After all, there is more in a philosophy than Mr. 
George has ever been able to believe. 

His infinite flexibility, is, however, often an advantage in 
negotiation. It has been well remarked that in dealing with 
many French statesmen of widely different temperaments he 
was enabled, by his gift of putting on a new soul as other 
men would put on a new shirt, to establish influence over almost 
all.^ He was cynical with Clemenceau, frank with Painleve, 
playfully genial with Briand, bon enfant with Albert 
Thomas, agile with Millerand, correct with Poincare. 
Equally various has he shown himself in domestic conference 
chambers — sometimes stern, oftener sweetly reasonable, occa- 
*"The Pomp of Power," Anonymous. 



AT WORK AND PLAY 345 

sionally unctuous, but always attuned to his audience and 
circumstances. There is, however, a serious subtraction from 
the usefulness of this gift of being so many things to so many 
men. Few, native or foreign, who have conferred with Mr. 
George, have failed to imagine themselves the victims of some 
minor or major misapprehension. In each individual case it 
might be possible to suggest hallucination, but the multitude 
of cases negatives such a theory. 

Mr. George as an orator has been subject at various times 
to unduly high praise and to unjust disparagement. At his 
worst he is very bad indeed; a really bad Lloyd George speech 
is almost reminiscent of the "Carmagnoles" of Barrere, except 
that he never condescends to misuse the classics. But even 
his greatest speeches are seldom worth reading in full after 
the occasion has passed. There are isolated passages of great 
beauty, often — though more rarely of late years — touches of 
true poetry; his similes have sometimes equalled the best of 
the German Emperor's, who sometimes contrived among much 
bombast to introduce a figure of high dignity ; indeed, it might 
be possible to show a real similarity between the oratorical 
methods, and even the mental processes, of these opposed 
autocrats. 

But the very fitness of Mr. George's rhetoric for its purpose 
tends to make his speeches out-of-date with the last edition 
of the paper in which they are reported. They are seldom 
witty, if wit means the power of vitalising wisdom and making 
a true thing memorable. They are seldom humorous in the 
genial English sense. But Mr, George is unequalled in the 
use as a weapon of a certain verbal gaiety. He blows bubbles, 
so to speak, that seem to be the mere emanation of high spirits, 
but they give off, in bursting, a gas of deadly corrosive power. 
His light chaff, which appears thoroughly good-natured and 
almost unconsidered, is far more lethal than were the laboured 
and frankly murderous gibes of Disraeli. But the whole point 
of the thing is its spontaneity, its perfect adaptation to the 
circumstances, and an attempt to recall the atmosphere is gen- 
erally no more successful than the German master's effort to 
explain all the bearings of his famous joke on the Schleswig- 



346 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

Holstein complication. Hence there are few good anecdotes 
of Mr. George's platform and parliamentary contests. For 
example, how little point there appears, when stated in cold 
print, in a story often told by Mr. George's admirers to illustrate 
his quickness in retort.^ In his early days of office he was 
obliged repeatedly to postpone an engagement to speak at 
Cardiff. "Well," he said, in beginning his speech, "I have 
been a long time coming, but here I am at last." "So am I," 
said the usual "Voice." "Yes," said Mr. George, "but are you 
all there?" The audience was vastly amused. The reader 
will probably, like Mr. Pickwick, merely envy the ease with 
which some people are entertained. 

The truth is that, whether in gay mood or grave, Mr, George 
has but one thought, that of capturing his audience as a 
barrister does a jury; and much of the effect of his speeches 
is purely histrionic. He is a master in the fine art of leading 
up to "loud cheers." He often makes of design a slight slip, 
in order that he may entrap an adversary into an incautious 
interruption. He will deliberately provoke laughter for the 
purpose of quenching it with a sudden solemnity. His "Well, 
really!" will often bring a blush to the face of so hardened 
a politician as Mr. Asquith. The shrug of his mobile shoulders, 
the sudden puckering of his face with a half-reproachful smile, 
suggest unutterable depths of depravity, or the most abject 
simple-mindedness in an opponent. 

Occasionally he makes, by careless over-confidence in his 
great powers, a mistake in the mere grammar of his trade. 
A slight example was his phrase, "the tocsin of peace," which, 
as Mr. Asquith said, made less agile minds envy the ease with 
which two ideas so far thought irreconcilable had been brought 
into association. More serious was what is perhaps his very 
worst figure, that of the ship in one of his numerous speeches 
insisting on the necessity of Coalition.^ "When there is a 
storm," he said, "it is all hands on deck. Every mariner, 

*I had rejected the anecdote, like scores of others, as pointless. But it 
assailed me from so many quarters that I began to suspect my own judg- 
ment and to imagine that it might have some value as illustrating method 
and character. 

' Llandudno, October, 1920. 



AT WORK AND PLAY 347 

every old salt, is pulled out of his bunk. He puts on his 
sou'wester to face the hurricane. . . . They are all wanted 
on deck, every one of them. I am standing on the bridge. 
. . . You can see typhoons on the horizon, I can see gallant 
vessels, like Russia and others, lying dismantled in the trough 
of the waves. Do not send anyone down until this ship is 
saved." Macaulay found it difficult, in the case of Mr. Mont- 
gomery's similitude, to associate "lambent beauty" with a 
sentry's eyes. What would he have said of the image which 
calls up the vision of a slightly reproachful Mr. Balfour being 
"pulled out of his bunk," or of Mr. George himself "putting 
on his sou'wester?" 

Mr. George's eloquence, his adroitness, his power of emo- 
tional appeal, his quickness of intuition, his immense self- 
confidence, and his wonderful vitality go far to explain his 
progress from the "village smithy parliament" to the domina- 
tion of British politics. But no one of these qualities, nor 
all combined, affords a clue to the fact that it was he, and no 
other, who could lead the country in the crisis of the war. The 
truth would seem to be that a great extremity called into 
activity the ultimate Lloyd George which underlies the skilful 
politician, the idealist, the shrewd negotiator, and the amateur 
of sermons and golf. 

And this ultimate Lloyd George had just that touch of 
ruthlessness which made him a fit match for a wholly ruthless 
enemy. He was a fighter who had no object but to win, who 
would refuse no weapon, decline no risk, scorn no help, cling 
to no tradition, value no friendship, in his determiaation to 
win. Others were intellectually as well endowed.- But who 
else had not a handicap of some sort — property, prepossession, 
veneration for institutions, or "the public school spirit," a 
hundred small filaments binding him as the tiny threads of 
the Lilliputians did Gulliver? Mr. George, without spiritual 
impediment, could devote himself ruthlessly to the removal of 
exterior obstacles. All others cared, though they might not 
admit it, for something besides victory, — for their clubs, their 
dinners, their friends, the British constitution, the three tailors 
of Tooley-street, the opinion of their regiment, their social 



348 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

clique, their political tea-party, or what not. Mr. Asquith 
would not — rather could not — even for the sake of winning 
the war, coin a phrase like "the tocsin of peace." Lord 
Haldane could not, if it meant smashing the German centre, 
emancipate himself from the idolatry of German thought. Mr. 
George had nothing to bind him. He may have had German 
friends before the war; he had only German enemies during 
the war. He certainly had many party friends before the war; 
during the war he only knew helpers and hinderers ; the one 
he welcomed without prejudice; the other he destroyed, if he 
could, without ruth. The rough business may have cost a 
momentary pang, but that hardly counted with a man whose 
obscure struggles must have brought him face to face with 
things much worse than the severance of a pleasant old political 
comradeship or the manufacture of an unpalatable new one. 

Mr. George has the good nature of some of those old 
Romans who, as retired conquerors, were willing to show 
mercy, and even philanthropy. But he belongs — perhaps 
through that Romanised Celtic blood of his, perhaps only 
through his early contact with brutal realities — rather to 
that ancient world, with its concentration on ends and its 
comparative indifference to means, than to the gentlemanly 
compromise of the English scheme. At the core of the man 
who has said, quite sincerely, so many moving things, there 
is an adamantine hardness. On the coast of Finland you will 
find a multitude of little islands which in summer flame with 
colour. There you see, relieving the ruggedness of the pines, 
an intoxicating gaiety of bloom and berry; but while you are 
marvelling at the resources of the soil your host shows you 
that half a foot below the surface there is nothing but solid 
rock. The whole island is one great boulder; and all that 
pageant of vegetation is a mere film on the face of the stone 
from which the spade, if used too vigorously, strikes fire. 
In like manner the surface softnesses, sentimentalities and 
luxuriances of Mr. George rest on a foundation quite ob- 
durate. Unlike the Prussian's, the hardness the war for a 
moment revealed was an intelligent hardness ; it could feel the 
limits of the practicable. It was policy and not tenderness that 



AT WORK AND PLAY 349 

moved Mr. George to oppose the Robertsonian policy of men 
and more men to feed the French furnace ; and he could always 
be influenced by a by-election, or a menacing speech from a 
clever man, or by a specially vehement demand for beer. But 
he had no delicacy concerning himself or others ; to return to 
his simile of the ship, we may express the fact by saying that 
every other "old salt'' who was "pulled out of his bunk" would 
at least delay his appearance on deck until he had put on his 
clothes, as well as the famous sou'wester. Mr. George, on 
due necessity, would have saved the ship in his trousers, 
perhaps even without them. Equally no tenderness made him 
falter in his course, whether it were an old colleague, or an 
admiral, or the British Constitution that stood in his way. 
If these could not be removed without endangering things 
deemed important, they must of course remain ; otherwise they 
must go, and the manner of their going was a question of 
pure expediency. In short, Mr. George literally cared for 
nothing but victory, and for his own position which he thought 
the essential condition of victory. The same could be said 
of no other. Mr. Asquith could not fight old friends and old 
ways; Lord Lansdowne might sometimes think of the income- 
tax; Lord Curzon of his present dignity and perhaps of a 
future marquisate, Mr. Churchill of a newspaper article, Mr. 
Law of Sir Edward Carson, Sir Edward Carson of Belfast, 
and Sir Frederick Smith of a joke. All other politicians, with 
their traditions, interests and affiliations, were to some extent 
divided in their aims and energies, and supreme power came 
naturally in due course to the lonely man of all weapons, few 
restraints, and one idea. 

It was, chiefly, the recognition of this fact — that Mr. George 
was "out" to win, and had no bowels for incompetence or 
half-heartedness — that won him the popular support which 
never failed so long as the fortunes of war were in the balance. 
He was felt to be not only the thorough-going enemy of Ger- 
many, but the enemy of all that might, whether by slackness or 
chivalry, help Germany. The part played by the newspapers 
in creating a Lloyd George legend has been much exaggerated. 
It is true that Mr. George has always had a full appreciation 



850 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

of the value of a good press. It is true that he has taken steps 
at various times to assure himself of that advantage. But in 
the main his hold on the newspapers has been gained by his 
public achievements, and by the perfectly legitimate exercise 
of courtesy and common-sense. From the moment that he 
first assumed office, he took care that journalists should be 
treated as men carrying out functions of public usefulness, 
that they should be told what they could properly be told, and 
politely refused what it was not wise to tell them. One day, 
very early in his ministerial career, he noticed a number of 
men waiting in the rain outside the Board of Trade office, 
and was informed that they were representatives of the press, 
anxious to hear the result of an important conference between 
strikers and employers. Pressing enquiry a little further, 
he found that this disconsolate crowd included several writers 
of almost European reputation. He at once invited the 
journalists into a comfortable room, apologised for the bad 
manners inadvertently shown them, and took decisive steps to 
secure that in future there should be no such discourtesy. 
Naturally he, like Mr. Chamberlain, whom he in this matter 
imitated, reaped a full reward. Some newspapers continued 
to dislike his politics, but his manners were always appreciated. 
Later, when a change of conditions compelled newspapers 
to go to press much earlier than formerly, Mr. George alone 
among politicians, realised the absurdity of making an im- 
portant speech at the time usual in Victorian days. He spoke 
thenceforth as much as possible early in the day, and for 
preference at noon on a Saturday, thus ensuring the very maxi- 
mum of publicity. Hence the bitter complaints that a "doped" 
press reported a Lloyd George speech fully, while boycotting 
the utterances of his opponents. 

Such realism in matters most statesmen have considered 
beneath their notice is in strict harmony with the view Mr. 
George adopted in his very early days, that his audience is 
not the House of Commons, but the country. Though master 
of every parliamentary art, he has never been in the true sense 
a parliament man ; and years of absolutism modified by the 
trade union vote have led him to resent any effort on the part 



AT WORK AND PLAY 351 

of the House of Commons to reassert its authority. Indeed, 
it is probable that while the general historian will be fascinated 
by the hero who "won the war" (but did not quite win the 
peace) the constitutional specialist will be chiefly interested in 
the innovating statesman who overthrew the growth of over 
two centuries, or who was ultimately overthrown by it. For 
that would appear to be the question which the not distant 
future must decide. There seems to be no room in one small 
island for the British constitution and David Lloyd George. 

Some years ago the author, meeting a well-informed Ameri- 
can publicist, asked for his real opinion of the late Theodore 
Roosevelt. To the Englishman Roosevelt seemed a truly great 
man; was that the view of his informed compatriot? The 
American took a full half -minute — an unusual time for any 
American — to arrange his thoughts. Then he said, with slow 
impressiveness, "Yes, Teddy is a big man, a real big man. 
There's no doubt about that. But — he's the littlest big man I 
know.'' 

In recalling this quaint criticism, the author, of course, in 
no way associates himself with it. But it may perhaps be in- 
voked to suggest the nature of the difficulties which beset any 
attempt at a final estimate of David Lloyd George. He is like 
that genie in the Arabian tale who was now a fire-vomiting 
giant, now a crowing cock, and anon an almost invisible 
pomegranate seed. Those who see only one set of facts find 
in him, to borrow the Gibbonian phrase, "the awful majesty 
of a hero," whereas Mr. George is in fact a quite domestic and 
comfortable person. Those who see only another set of facts 
are guilty of even greater absurdity in treating him merely as 
an adroit politician. The present writer is content to state 
facts as he has seen them, and to draw only such inferences as 
seem to be justified. For the rest he merely suggests that 
history will agree with much contemporary opinion, that Mr. 
George may fairly claim admission to the small company of 
great, and even very great, British statesmen. But it will 
probably also place him among those of whom it may be said, 
as Macaulay said of the elder Pitt, that their greatness was "not 
a complete and well-proportioned greatness," and that the 



352 MR. LLOYD GEORGE 

drama of their lives, far from presenting the symmetry of a 
perfect piece of art, is "a crude though striking piece, a piece 
abounding in incongruities, a piece without any unity of plan, 
but redeemed by some noble passages, the effect of which is 
increased by the tameness or extravagance of what precedes or 
of what follows." We may at least say that in Mr. George's 
case a part is greater than the whole, and that, if it were pos- 
sible, the subtraction of much would make the sum greater. 
But that, indeed, is merely to state that he is human, or perhaps 
a little more human than some others. 

If, however, we withhold judgment on every point where a 
difference of opinion is possible, if we abandon to destructive 
criticism every act of administrative vigour which is claimed 
by his admirers as a trumph, if we accept the least charitable 
view of his faults and failures, there still remains more than 
enough with which to defy what Lord Rosebery once called 
"the body-snatchers of history, who dig up dead reputations 
for malignant dissection." If only that he imparted, in a 
black time, when it appeared but too likely that the Alliance 
might falter and succumb from mere sick-headache, his own 
defying, ardent, and invincible spirit to a tired, puzzled, dis- 
tracted and distrustful nation, if only that he dispelled the 
vapours, inspired a new hope and resolution, brought the 
British people to that temper which makes small men great, 
assured Allies that their cause was in the fullest sense our own, 
and finally achieved the great moral victory implied in "unity 
of command" — if these things be alone considered, he will be 
judged to have earned for his portrait the right to a dignified 
place in the gallery of history, and some future generation will 
probably recall with astonishment that it was considered unfit 
to adorn the dining-room of a London club. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Aberystwith, 58 

Addison, Dr. Christopher, 144, 191, 

236, 304, 319 
Adriatic, 289 

"Affair of the Shells," 239 
Afforestation, 121 
Afghan War, 34 
Agadir, 146, 148 
Agricultural Relief Act, 66 
Albania, 167 
Albu, 81 

Algeciras Conference, 146 
Allied Conference in Rome, 230 
Alsace-Lorraine, 244, 245, 283 
Alexeieff, General, 234 
Aitken, Sir Max, later Lord Beaver- 
brook, 213, 214, 219, 222 
Aisne, Battle of the, 231 
Amiens, 251 
America, 277 
Americans, 

brigaded with the allies, 257 

forces in France, 256 

shipping American troops, 259 
American Marconi Company, see 

"Marconi affair" 
Anglo -American -French Alliance, 

290 
Anglo-French "pact," 326 
Anglo-Irish misunderstanding, 333 
Answers, 342 
Anti-Budget League, 122 
Anti-Royal sentiment, 49 
Arabi Pasha, 34 
Arabia, 244 

Archbishop of York, 131 
Ariel, 133 
Armenia, 244 
Armistice, 264, 271, 336 
Army, discontent of, 300 
Asquith, Herbert Henry, 16, 66, 81, 
131, i6s, 198, 339 



Asquith, Herbert Henry, a Consti- 
tutionalist, 130 

and Carson, 212, 223 

and conscription, 195 

and shells, 183 

and the War Cabinet, 220 

antagonism between Lloyd George 
and, III 

at Montagu's dinner party, 221 

becomes Prime Minister, 109 

Bonar Law spends week-end with, 
216 

discipline in the Cabinets of, 
142 

on Free Trade, 96 

plot to oust, 213-215 

resigns, 224 

threat to resign, 137 
Asquithian Liberals, 299 
Asquith, Mrs., 221 
Atkinson, 49 
Australia, 282 
Austria, 170, 230 
Austrian Italians, 244 

Balfour, Arthur J., 57, 72, 122, 154 

261, 276, 293 
at Washington, 327 
House of Lords "Mr. Balfour's 

poodle," 109 
Balfour, Gerald, 61 
Balfour-Morant Act, 105 
Baker, Newton, American Secretary 

for War, in London, 256 
Balliol, 277 

Balkan campaign to save Serbia, 197 
Balkan project, 181 
Balkan War, 167 
Baner, Y., 62 
Bangor, 40 
Barnes, 236, 314 
Barres, Maurice, 284 



355 



356 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 



Beaconsfield, Earl of, see Disraeli, 
Benjamin 

Beaufort, Duke of, 133 

Beaverbrook, Lord, see Aitken, Sir 
Max 

Beersheba, 231 

Beranger, Rapport, 232 

Belfast parliament, 309 

Belgium, 280 

Berlin Zoological Gardens, 116 

Bert, Alfred, 81 

Bethmann-Hollweg, Chancellor, 167 

Biarritz, 137 

Bible, the, in the schools, 90 

"Big Four," 285 

Big guns, 192 

Big navy man, 134 

Big navy ministers, 167 

Birkenhead, Lord, 99, 317 

recommends a "national" or "cen- 
tre" party, 315 

Birrell, Augustine, raillery of, 52, 
106 
education bill of, 108 

Bishop of St. Asaph, 92, 153 

"Bishops' Relief Bill," 5° 

Blenheim, 129, 134 

Blunt, Wilfred Scawen, 136 

Board Schools, see Schools 

Boccaccio, 128 

Boer War, 59, 63, 65, 122 
Blomfontein entered by Lord 

Roberts, 75 
Brunetiere on, 69 
effect on Lloyd George, 87 
invasion of Natal, 66 
"Liberal Imperialists," 66 
South African Republic, 66 
"Stop-the-War" faction, 66 

"Bolshevism," 269, 290 

Bolshevists, 234, 292, 326 

Bonar Law, see Law 

Booth, Handel, 186 

Boscawen, Sir Arthur Griffith, on 
Lloyd George, 60 

Bosphorus, 293 

Bosnia, annexed by Austria, n6 

Boulogne, 192 

"Boy Alderman," 40 

Brandenburg, 284 

Brest-Litovsk Treaty, 243 



Brewers, 108 
Briand, M., 179, 208 

downfall of, 326 
Bristol pledges, 277 
British Dominions, 329 
British ImperiaHsts, and the Great 

War, 178 
British neutrality, 171 
British Socialists, 178 
Brockdorff-Rantzau, 293, 294 
Brodrick, Mr., afterward Lord 

Midleton, 86 
Brunetiere, on the Boer War, 69 
"Brutus," 33, 41, 43, 316 
Buda-Pesth, 287 
Budget League, 122 
Budget, secured, 136 
Bulgaria, 207 
Burns, John, 100, 172 
Business men in the Cabinet, 225 
Byng, Sir Julian, 239, 247 

Cabinet government, a conspiracy, 

15 
Cabinet split on Germany, 170 
Cadorna, General, 230, 238 
Caillaux, M., 146, 148 
Calais, Conference at, 232 
Cambrai, 239, 247 
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 

59, 66, 80, 92, 109, 216 
Cannes, Conference at, 326 
Caporetto disaster, 234, 237 
Carlyle, on bankruptcy, 318 
"Carmagnoles" of Barrere, 345 
Carnarvon Boroughs, 39, 42 
Carnegie, Andrew, legacy to Lloyd 

George, 335 
Carthage, 169 
Carson, Sir Edward, 127, 156, 164, 

188, 210, 212, 308, 349 
"Cassius," 212 
Cave, Viscount, 161 
Cecil, Lord Hugh, 89, 91 
Cecil, Lord Robert, 210, 240 
"Celtic fringes," 53 
Censorship, "j^iy 235 
Chamberlain, Austen, 78, 97, 124, 

131, 303 
Chamberlain, Joseph, 35, 38, 66, 71, 
83, 89, 127, 148 



INDEX 



357 



Chamberlain, Neville, 228 

Chaplin, Charles, 341 

Chaplin, Henry, later Viscount 

Chaplin, 60 
Chatham, 71, 187 
Chemin des Dames, 232, 281 
Chequers, 335, 339, 340 
Chesterton, Gilbert K., 304 
"Chinese slavery" debates, 99 
Church school, see Schools 
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 48 
Churchill, Winston, 80, no, 118, 134, 

135, 269, 303, 304, 349 
City financiers and the war, 171, 172, 

174 
"Clean" peace, 273 
Clemenceau, 244, 245, 260, 276, 2TJ, 

284, 290, 324, 344 
as a dictator, 276 
Clergy Discipline Bill, 50 
Clifford, Dr., 91 
Clyde, Labour on the, 300 
Coal, nationalisation and royalties, 

300 
Coalition, 11, 139, 186, 267, 272, 312, 

313, 346 
Coalition Liberals, 318 
Coalition Liberalism, 299 
Cobdenite faith, 96 
Cohen, Bela, 287 
Collins, Michael, 331 
Committee of Business Men, 320 
Conscription, 195, 329 

and General Service Act, 198 
Conscription Bill in Ireland, 255 
Conservative Party, 333 
Constantine, King, 239, 326 
Constantinople, 180 
Cook, Sir E. T., editor of the Daily 

News, TJ 
"Corridor" to Poland, 289 
Cork, burned down, j^2j 
Corn Laws, 97 
"Country fit for heroes" schemes, 

274 
"Coupon" system, 274 
"Court of Honour" on the Maurice 

affair, 254 
Criccieth, home of Lloyd George, 

21 
Croft, Tranby, 49 



Cromer, Lord, 132 

Cromwell, 266; 303 

Crown Prince of Germany, abdi- 
cates, 263 

Curragh incident, 169 

Curzon, Lord, 132, 225, 349 

Czechs, self-determination of the, 
310 

Czarist government, 322 

Dail Eireann, 330, 331 

Daily Chronicle, 168 

Daily Mail, 76, 127 

Daily News, 120 

Dalmatia, 180 

Dalziel, Sir Henry, afterward Lord 

Dalziel, 52, 186, 219, 222 
Damascus, 231 
Danegelt, 301 
Danzig, 283 
Dardanelles, the, 180, 244 

failure at, 197 

Mr. Bonar Law and, 197 
Davitt, Michael, 38 
Deadlock on the Western front, 180 
"Decontrol" of the coal trade, 319 
Defence of the Realm Bill, 182 
"Democracy," 13 
Denikin, 292 
Denominational schools, 89, see 

Schools 
"Deputy Prime Minister," 320 
Derby, Lord, 334 

Director General of Recruiting, 
198 
Derby scheme, 199 
Desmoulins, Camille, 157 
Development Fund, 121 
Devonport, Lord, 228 
Devonshire, Duke of, 96, 152 
Dickens, Charles, 341 
"Die-Hard Opposition," 333 
Dillon, 84, 89, 136, 308, 310 
Dilke, Sir Charles, 52 
"Dilution," 192, 236 
Diocletian, 12, 13 

Director General of Recruiting, 198 
Disarmament, 324 
Disciples of Christ, 342 
Disestablishment, 40, 107 
Disestablishment Bill, 42, 152 



358 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 



Disraeli, Benjamin, 13, 293 
Dissenters, the, ZT^ QO. 109 
"Dominion Home Rule," 327, 332 
Douaumont, 231 
Doullens, Conference at, 248 
Downing Street, barricades at, 300 

No. II, 124, 220 
Dreadnoughts, 118 

scrapping of, 168 
Draft Peace Treaty handed to the 

Germans, 293 
Dublin, hodkey match at, 327 

Easter rebellion in, 200 
Duchess of Cambridge, funeral of, 

49 
Dukes, the, 125, 129, 131, 133, 140 
"Dumping," 323 
Dutch, 69 

"Easter Week," 307 

Eastern strategy, 203 

Eastern theatre of the war, 180 

Edward the Confessor, 38 

Education Bill of 1902, 88, 108 

Egypt, Z2Z, 335 

Egyptians, 34 

Egyptian War, 34 

Ehud, 34 

Einstein, 235 

El Greco, 21 

Ellis, Tom, 39, 51, S3 

Emir Feisul, 293 

Employers' Liability Act, 143 

England, war aims declared, 244 

Established Church, 20, 27, 40 

Evans, David, 31 

Evans, S. T., 51 

Explosive shell, 183 

Fabian Socialism, 142 
Federalism, 139 
"Federal Solution," z(>, 54, I39 
Festiniog, 36 
Festubert, Battle of, 183 
Fez, 146 
Finland, 348 

Fisher, Lord, 113, 119, 134, 304 
Flanders, 233 

Foch, General Ferdinand, 238, 247, 
284, 323 

and the Armistice, 262 

a polite sphinx, 260 



Foch, General Ferdinand, appointed 

generalissimo, 248 
Fourteen Points, 269 
Fowler, Sir Henry, 75 
France, and reparations, 323 
Frankfort, occupation of, 321 
Free Churchmen, 95 
"Freedom of the seas," 279 
Free Trade, 96 
Free Traders, 98 
French Congo, 146 
French Press, hostile to Britain, 324 
French pre-war loans, and Russia, 

322 
French revolution, 198, 343 
French, Sir John, later Lord French, 

183, 186, 308 
"Full Dominion status for Ireland," 

330 

Gallipoli, 180, 181, 197 

Game Laws, 163 

Gardiner, A. G., 12, TJ, 115 

Garvin, J. L., 126 

Geddes, Sir Auckland, 304 

Geddes, Sir Eric, 204, 2.2,7, 281, 304, 
319, 320 

General Service Act, and conscrip- 
tion, 198 

Generalissimo, question of a, 248 

Genoa, Conference at, 326 

"Gentlemanocracy," 13 

German Bolshevism, fear of, 271 

German Colonial Party, 146 

German Colonies, 244, 323 

German Empire, 288 

German fleet, 141, 284 

German insurance system, 116 

German menace, 118 

German mercantile marine, 323 

German navy, preparations, 167 

German peace moves, first, 209 

"German gold," monnaie de singe, 

323 
Germans, 326 
Germany, 286 
liabilities, 281 
military menace, 324 
must pay, 279 
George, David, see Lloyd George, 
David, 



INDEX 



359 



George, King, 329 
George, Mrs., 340 
George, William 
father of David Lloyd George, 17- 

19 
married Elizabeth Lloyd of 

Llanystumdwy, 18 
George, William, brother of David 

Lloyd George, 19, 27 
Gladstone, 35, 48, 51, 341 

domination of, 65 
Glendower, Owen, 17, 38 
Gibbon, on Diocletian, 11 
Goethe, 168 
Goldsmith's ballad, 121 
Gore, Ormsby, 152 
Gough, General, 247, 248, 251 
Gorringe, case of Mr., 125 
Gorst, Sir John, 54 
Government by experts, 268 
Government's Licensing Bill, 115 
Grand Duke Nicholas, 180 
Great Britain, 
agreement w^ith United States on 

Pacific question, 327 
Great War, 166 

"race between General Hinden- 

burg and President Wilson," 

256 
Greenwood, Sir Hamar, plan of, 

fails, 311, 327, 328 
Grey, Sir Edward, later Viscount, 

66, 82, 113, 136, 146, 245 
Griffith, Arthur, 331 
Guerilla operations in Ireland, 328 
Guildhall speech, 263 
Guyot, Ives, 284 



Haig, Field Marshal Sir Douglas, 
230, 232, 245, 255, 262 

attack on Flanders, 233 
Haldane, Lord, 66, 90, 91, 95, 168, 
176, 348 

the Hegelian philosopher, 90 

visits Germany, 166 
Hamilton, General Bruce, 79, 80 
Hamilton, Lord George, 133 
Hampshire, tragedy of the, 202 
"Hanging the Kaiser," 272 
Hansard, 47 



Hapsburg, 280 

Harcourt, Lewis, 113 

Harcourt, Sir William, 55, 60, 66, 
167, 172 

Healy, Tim, 63 

Henderson, Arthur, 225, 236 

Herzegovina, annexed by Austria, 
116 

Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, 96 

High explosives, 192 

Hindenburg, 209, 232 

Hohenzollern Empire, 280 

Hohenzollern King, 180 

Hohenzollerns, flight of the, 284 

Home Rule, 41, 139 

Home Rule Act, the, 327 

"Home Rule all Round," 36 

"Honours," 235 

House, Colonel, 289 

House of Commons, 38, 132 
decay of the, 16 
Lloyd George's ascendancy, 12 

House of Lords, 35, 66 
and "social reform," 115 
attacked by Lloyd George, 131 
"Mr. Balfour's poodle," 109 
the veto of, 106 

Hughes, W. M., 281 

Hungary, 180, 287 

Hwyl, 131 

Kaiser, 113, 274, 279 

abdicates, 263 
"Kaiser's Battle," 256 
Kemal Pasha, 326 
Kernel-bearing palms, in Nigeria, 

211 
Keynes, J. M., 292, 294 
"Khaki" Election of 1900, 75 
Kimberley, 75 
King Edward VII, 

death of, 135 

dislike of Lloyd George, 138 
King of the Hellenes, death of, 326 
Kipling, Rudyard, 151 
Kitchener, Lord, 79, 176, 192 

and conscription, 195 

and shells, 183 

drowned, 201 

the public idol, 187 
Koltchak, 292 



360 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 



Kruger, Paul, 67, 70, 76 

Kultur, 284 
Kynochs Limited, 78 

Imperial War Cabinet, 331 

Income-tax, 95 

Increment value of land, 120 

Indemnity, 283 

Indemnity Acts, 229 

Independent Labour Party, 108 

India, 218, 335 

Insurance Act, 206 

Ireland, 35, 84, 307, 322, 330 

and conscription, 308 

and Lloyd George, 164 

and United States, 309 

attitude of Lloyd George toward, 
152 

Church in, 53 

Conscription Bill, 255 

Easter rebellion, 200 
Irish "aspirations," 268 
Irish Conference at Downing Street, 

330 
"Irish Free State," 331, 333 
Irish Home Rule, 35 
Irish Local Government Act, 66 
Irish Nationalists, 307 

and the schools, 90 

and the war, 188 
Irish nationality, 332 
Irish Provisional Government, 331 
Irish question, 164 
Irish self-government, 308, 332 
Irish "Treaty," 331, 332 
Irving, Henry, 51 
Isaacs, Godfrey, director of the 

Marconi Company, 156 
Isaacs, Harry, 156 
Isaacs, Sir Rufus, later Lord Read- 
ing, iss, 165, 201 
Italy, 167, 180 
Italian front, 237 

Jacobin cap, 131 
Jameson, Dr., 69 
Jellicoe, Lord, 237 
Jerusalem, 231 
Jewish ministers, 218 
Joffre, 197, 230 
Johannesburg, 69 



Johnson, Dr., 189 
"Joint control," 300 
Joshua, 34 
Jowett, Dr., 24, 11 1 
Jugo-Slavs, 310 
Julius Caesar, 278 

"L'Affaire Nivelle," 236 
"La fa Presto," 258 
Labouchere, Henry, 49, 52, 66, 73 
Labour, 132 

and the Great War, 192 

British, and the Poles, 326 

"direct action" by, 313 

discontent of, 299 

Taff Vale decision, 106 
Labour Party, 

and peace, 273 

in war cabinet, 225 
Law, Andrew Bonar, 80, 161, 185, 
188, 202, 210, 211, 216, 224, 225, 
303, 3^7, 320 
Ladysmith, 75 
Laibach, 230 
Lambeth, 30 
Lancashire school managers "rude 

mechanicals," 18 
Land campaign, 162 
"Land for Heroes" scheme, 319 
Land scheme, 153 
Land taxes, 122 
Land valuation, 120 
Landlordism, 35 
Landlords, 108 
Lansbury, George, 155 
Lansdowne, Lord, 106, 130, 349 

killed the Government's Licensing 
Bill, IIS 

letter to the Daily Telegraph, 242 
Lansing, 289 
Larne gun-running, 169 
Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, 70 
League of Nations, 269, 279, 293 
"Le General Non-Non," Sir William 

Robertson, 204 
Le Matin, 141, 155 
Lee, Lord and Lady, of Fareham, 

335 
"Liberal education," defined, 30 
Liberal Unionist Party, noncon- 
formists leave the, 94 



INDEX 



361 



Liberals of Carnarvonshire, 39 

Licensing Bill, 115 

Limehouse, 130 

Lincoln, 198 

Liquor Board, 194 

Liquor Trade, 122 

"Little Welsh solicitor," 64, 121, 297 

Llewellyn, 94 

Lloyd, Elizabeth, 19 

marries William George, 18 

mother of David Lloyd George, 
18 
"Lloyd, David," Lloyd George 

known as, 21 
Lloyd George, David, 

a "hedge-breaker," 27 

a very great British statesman, 351 

a "volunteer," 34 

advocate in the Free Trade issue, 
96 

Agadir speech, 148 

and Anglo-German understanding, 
116 

and "beer," 194 

and Briand, 180 

and cabinet, 15 

and caricaturists, 2,27 

and Coalition, 187 

and conscription, 196 

and "drink," 182 

and the French generals, 181 

and Germany, 112 

and his little donkey-cart, 39 

and Ireland, 164, 309 

and John Burns, 100 

and journalists, 350 

and King Edward, 138 

and Maurice's charges, 254 

and Ministry of Munitions, 188 

and parliament, 229 

and society, 316 

and the German menace, 166 

and the Rhine provinces, 288 

and the temperance party, 37 

and the United States, 256 

and troubles on the Clyde, 182 

and Welsh pofitics, 38 

and .William, wore Glengarry caps 
and knickerbockers, 25 

answer to German peace moves, 
228 



Lloyd George, David, 

antagonism between Asquith and, 
III 

apologia for ousting Asquith, 227 

as a strategist, 180 

as an orator, 345 

as "Brutus," 33 

as Electioneer, 265 

ascendancy in House of Commons, 
12 

assails Lord Northcliffe, 289 

assails Lord Randolph Churchill 
and Mr. Chamberlain, 48 

assails the clergy, 50 

at the War Office, 202 

at Westminster, 56 

attack on Chamberlain, 82 

attacked by The Times, 67 

attacks the House of Lords, 131 

attitude on Ireland, 152 

begins to use the "Lloyd," 47 

Boer War, effect of, on, 87 

born in Manchester, 17 

breaks with his friends, 240 

Budget speech, 120 

called "another Chamberlain" by 
Michael Davitt, 38 

Calvinist chapel-goer, 23 

Canadian tour, 63 

Chamberlain and "Judas," 84 

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan- 
caster, 96 

Chancellor of the Exchequer, no 

Coalition, 312 

courage of, 240 

Daily Mail on, y6 

defender of poachers, 2^ 

demands Welsh Home Rule, 35 

desired power, 217 

devoid of snobbishness, 344 

disarmament, 35 

effect of House of Commons 
speeches, 73 

Elizabeth Lloyd, his mother, 18 

entered name at the Temple, 46 

ex-Pacifist, 342 

feels want of a "formal educa- 
tion," 277 

foible of infallibility, 264 

fond of the theatre, 340 

forms cabinet, 225 



362 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 



Lloyd George, David, 

freeman of Birmingham in 1921, 

83 

French studies, 32 

fusion, 315 

"General Manager of Europe," 
342 

government of, personal, 16 

had the "mysticism of Cromwell," 
141 

Hammer of God, 129 

head of the War Cabinet, 217 

his brother William, 19 

his maiden speech, 47 

his mother chose law as his 
career, 30 

his origin, 14 

home of, at Criccieth, 21 

in Kensington, 63 

in the Cabinet, 102 

intuitions of, 344 

Irish policy, 307 

knowledge of French, 31 

known as "David Lloyd," 21 

land fit for heroes, 304 

Limehouse speech, 124 

Llanfrothen burial scandal, 37 

loves a motor-car, 338 

Mansion House Speech, 147 

Marconi case, 154-161 

marries Margaret Owen, 38 

middle-class pride and ambition 
of, 26 

might have been physician, 30 

might have been Primate of Eng- 
land, 30 

Minister of Munitions, 112 

no pacifist, 34 

no political Nelson, 242 

not a Socialist, 141 

on Germany, in 1914, 168 

on Ireland, 35 

on military service, 35 

on the Bible in schools, 91 

Order of Merit, 297 

"out" to win, 349 

"outside the English tradition," 

peculiar form of autocracy of, 258 
personal appearance of, 338 
physique, 337 



Lloyd George, David, 

plants potatoes at Criccieth, 334 

praised by The Times, 94 

praises Versailles treaty, 321 

prepares for the elections, 261 

President of the Board of Trade, 
102 

pro-Boer, 67 

prophecy about Russia, 234 

Protectionist Free Trader, 116 

"pulpit-struck," 29 

reappears as a politician after the 
war, 265 

refused the Garter, 297 

remains "cottage-bred," 317 

resigns, 223 

routine of, 339 

sent to Westminster, 42 

sons of, 340 

speech at Queen's Hall, 177 

summoned to the palace, 225 

the British Carnot, 260 

the "modern Jack Cade," 127 

the "people's lawyer," 37 

the prophecy of, 32 

"the traitor," 83 

theological interest, 338 

threat to resign, 220 

"Too Late," speech, 205 

tour of Germany, 116 

trip to the Argentine, 63 

unshackling of Russia, 234 

war control 257 

warns Germany, 147 

William George, his father, 17 
Lloyd George, Miss Megan, 340 
Lloyd George, Mrs., descended 
from Owen Glendower, 38, 340 
Lloyd, Richard, 19-21, 298 

belonged to the Disciples of 
Christ, 20 

on infant baptism, 26 

pen picture of, 20 

studied French in order to teach 
his nephew, 31 

uncle of David Lloyd George, 19 
Load-line, Samuel Plimsoll, 104 
Long John Silver, 303 
Long, Walter, later Lord Long of 

Wraxhall, 268 
Longuet, Jean, 141 



INDEX 



363 



Loos, 196 

Lords' veto, 135 

Loreburn, Lord, 168 

Louis the Great, 291 

Lowther, Colonel Claude, 288 

Lucy, Sir Thomas, 28 

Ludendorff, General, 205, 209, 250, 

262 
Luther, 168 
Lympne, 341 
Macaulay, 351 
MacDonald, Ramsay, 144 
Macedonia, 232 
Maclay, Sir Joseph, 228, 257 
Mafeking, 75 
Mahan, Captain, 75 
"Making Germany pay," 272 
Manchester School, 140 
"Mandates," 286 
Mansion House Speech, 146 
"Marconi aflfair," 78, 154-161, 

i6s 

George Lansbury, 155 

Isaacs, Godfrey, 156 

Leo Maxse, 155 

Lloyd George, 159 

Master of Elibank, 156 

"National Review," I55 

Sir Albert Spicer, 160 

Sir Rufus Isaacs, 155 
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Com- 
pany, 155 
Mark Antony, 33 
Marlborough, 206 
Marne, 260 
Martin, Roy, 190 
Martineau, Dr. James, 18 
Massingham, W. H., 34 
Master of Elibank, later Lord Mur- 
ray, 156, 157, 159 
Maurras, 284 

Maurice, General, 254, 273 
Maximian, 334 
Max, Prince, of Baden, 261 
Maxse, Leo, 163 

McKenna, The Hon. Reginald, 59, 
93, 108, no, 134, 152, 153, 195. 
227 

and the Navy, T13 

at the Admiralty, 119 

"third-rate Minister," 119 



Mediterranean vital to Great Brit- 
ain, 326 
Merchant Shipping Act of 1906, 104 
Meredith, 143 
Mesopotamia, 323 
Methuen, Lord, defeat of, 85 
Metropolitan Police, discontent of, 

300 
Midleton, Lord, 86 
Military Service Bill, 198, 200 
Mill, John Stuart, 50 
Millerand, 344 

Milner, Lord, 69, 129, 130, 132, 225, 
260, 277, 278 

and Germany, 271 

his Balliol infallibility, 83, 284 

on Bolshevism, 287 

sent to France, 248 
Milton, 168 

Ministry of Reconstruction, 236 
Ministry of Transport, 319 
Monastir, 207 
"Monnaie de singe," 323 
Mons, 247 
Montagu, Edwin, 206, 218, 220, 293 

dinner party, 221 

pro-Turkish Secretary for India, 
326 

Secretary of State for India, 236 
Montenegro, 207 
Moorish tribes, 146 
Montreuil, 230, 251 
Morant, Sir Robert, 88 
Morley, Lord, 50, 66, 80, 172 
Morning Post, 214 
Morocco, 146 

Moroccans, on the Rhine, 291 
Murray, Lord, 156, see Elibank, 

master of 
Murray, Sir Archibald, 183 

Nanney, Sir Ellis, 33 
Napoleon, 291 
Napoleon III, 166 
Natal, invasion of, 66 
National Insurance Act, 142, 145 
National League for Wales, 57 
National Liberal Federation, 168 
Nationalisation, 300 
Nationality in Wales, 69 
"Naval holiday," 167 



364j 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 



"Navies against nightmares," 119 
"New Alsace-Lorraines," 283 
Newcastle, 211 
Newcastle Programme, 53 
Newspaper censorship, "]■>) 
Newspapers, little contributed to, by 

Lloyd George, 46 
New War Cabinet, 219 
Nigeria, kernel-bearing palms in, 

211 
Nivelle, General, 231, 239 
Lloyd George's confidence in, 232 
plan to smash German line, 231 
Nonconformist schools, 90 
Nonconformists, 26, 90, 94 
Nonconformity, 27 
Non-intervention, 171 
North Wales Federation, 57 
Northclifife, Lord, 204, 215, 222, 223, 

342 _ _ 

Northern Irish Parliament, opening 

of, 329 

Old Age Pension Act, 114, 130, 145 
"Old Enemy," the Established 

Church, 107 
"Old stranger," the Established 

Church, 40 
Opposition, elimination of an, 266 
Order of Merit, 297 
Order of the British Empire, 235 
Orders in Council, 229 
Orlando, 289 
Oxford, 277 

Pacifism, 35, 134, 148, 169 

Pacifists, 35, 134 

Painleve, 232, 260, 344 

Palestine, 323 

Panama Canal, 190 

"Parnell of Wales," 53, 56 

Parliamentary Government, lii 

"Passive resistance," 92 

Passitch, 293 

Patents and Designs Bill, 105 

Patents, 105 

Peace, a strong or "clean," 273 

Peace Conference, 267 

Peers, 108 

Pendennis, 128 

Penrhyn, Lord, 127 



"People's Budget," the, 115 
"People's Lawyer," 37 
Perks, Sir Robert, 92 
Pershing, 

and the armistice, 262 
Petain, General, 251, 255 

given command of the French 
forces, 233 

view of, on Nivelle scheme, 232 
Peter the Great, 277 
Piave, 237 
Pitt, William, 14, 191, 203, 206, 343, 

351 
Piatt, Colonel, 75 
Plimsoll, Samuel, and the load-line, 

104 
Plural Voting Bill, 107 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 312 
Poincare, 326, 344 
Poland, 244, 321 
Poles, 283, 310, 326 
Polish frontier, 288 
Pomerania, 284 
Pompey, 212 
Pontypridd, Lord, 59 
Popery, 62 
Portmadoc, 36 
Pretoria, 75 
Prime Minister, and War Cabinet, 

222, 223 
Prince Henry of Prussia, visit of, 

49 
Prince Max of Baden, 269 
Problems of peace-making, 278 
Pro-Boers, 75 

Pro-German party in Russia, 209 
Prospero, 133 
"Protection," 97, 99, 127 
Prussianised Germany, 284 
Prussianism, 294 
Public School spirit, 14 
Puleston, Sir John, 52 
"Punitive peace," dangers of, 287 
Puritanism, 29 

Quakers, 77 

Queen Victoria, death of, 78 

Radicalism, Welsh, 40 
Railway strike, 306 



INDEX 



365 



Rapallo, Allied Conference at, to 
save Italy, 237 

Rapallo policy, 239 

Reading, Lord (see also Sir Rufus 
Isaacs), 175, 201 

"Reconstruction," 313, 319 
and waste, 304 

Rector of Llanfrothen, 2)7 

Red Dragon, 42 

Redmond, John, 136, 164, 200, 307 

"Red Tabs," 176 

Reformation, the, 153 

Reparation and indemnities, 280 

"Reparations," 282, 324 
ratio, 323 

Repington, Colonel, 183, 185, 186, 
191, 194, 208, 221, 246 

Reynold's Ne-wspaper, 219 

Rhine, 284, 291 

Rhine provinces, 286 

Rhine settlement, 288 

Rhineland, 284 

Rhodes, Cecil, 69 

Rhondda, Lord, 58, 59, 225, 244 
in the Coalition Government of 
1916, 59, also see Thomas, D, A. 

Ribblesdale, Lord, 131 

Riddell, Lord, 317 

Riots in Whitehall, 319 

Ripon, Marquess of, 12 

Roberts, Lord, 79, 314 
enters Blomfontein, 75 

Robertson, Sir William, 176, 203, 
204, 230, 240, 245, 261 
"Le General Non-Non," 204 

"Robbery of God," 152 

Roman Catholic University for Ire- 
land, 62 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 351 

Rosebery, Lord, 40, 66, 81, 352 
defeated, 55 
panegyric of, 82 

Rothschild, Lord, 123 

Royalties, 300 

Royalty, 56 

Ruhr Valley, 321 

Rumania, 180, 205, 223 

Rumanian Irredenta, 244 

Runciman, 108 

Russia, 170 
collapse of, 233 



Russia, French pre-war loans to, 
322 
government de facto, 322 
no "bulging corn bins" in, 322 
pro-German party in, 209 
Soviet upheaval, 209 

Russian revolution, 232 

Rutland, Duke of, 133 

Saar Valley, 286 

Saar Valley Coalfields, plebiscite in 

relation to, 286 
Salisbury, Lord, 33 
Salonika, 180, 207 
Samuel, Herbert, 100, 124, 155, 218 
Sankey Commission, 301 
Sankey, Mr. Justice, 300 
Sarajevo, 169 
Sarrail, General, 197 
Sassoon, Sir Philip, 341 
St. John of Bletso, Lord, 128 
Sauer, 81 

Sauvigny, Bertier de, 232 
Schiller, 168 
Schleswig-Holstein, 345 
Schools, 

Balfour-Morant Act, 105 

board, 90 

church, 26 

denominational, 89 

Irish nationalists and the, gi 

nonconformist, 90 

Public, 13 

the Bible in the, 90 

voluntary, 23, 89, 93 
Seely, Major, 100 
Self-determination, 286 
Senegalese, on the Rhine, 291 
Senlis, 262 
Seppuku, 58 
Serbia, 170, 205 
Serbs, 167 
"Seren," The, 50 
Servants' Tax Registers' Defence 

Association, 144 
Shakespeare, William, 28, 168 
Shells, affair of the, 183 
Simon, Sir John, 168, 172, 195, 327 
Sinn Fein, 256, 273, 307, 327 
Small War Cabinet, 216 
Smillie, Mr. Robert, 46 



366 



MR. LLOYD GEORGE 



Smith, Sir F. £., afterward Lord 
Birkenhead, 99, 124, 143, 349 

Smuts, General Jan, 228, 236, 285 

Snowden, Philip, I99. 245 

"Social Reform," 134. 142 

Socialism, 124, 127, 268 

Socialistic Conference at Stock- 
holm, 236 

Somme, Battle of the, 255 

Somme offensive, 205 

South Africa, 285 

South African Republic, 66 

South Wales Federation, 58 

Soviet upheaval, 209 

Spa, 323 

Spagnoletto, 21 

Spender, Harold, 87, 103, 169 

Spicer, Sir Albert, 160 

Spurgeon, 90 

Stockholm Conference incident, 244 

Strassburg statue, 284 

Strong peace, 273 

Stuart days, 16 

Stubbs, 32 

Sturmer, Prime Minister, 209 

Sutherland, Sir William, 116 

Swinburne, O7 



Taff Vale decision, 106 

Talbot, Lord Edmond, 221 

Tardieu, Andre, 281 

on Lloyd George, 285, 295 

Tariff Commission, 163 

Tariff Reform, 95 

Tariff Reformers, 109 

Temperance party, 37, 47, 52 

Temple, Sir Richard, 55 

Teschen, 288 

"The People's Budget," 60 

"The Tiger," 276 

The Times, 196, 223 
and shells, 186 
and the War Cabinet, 222 
attacks Lloyd George, 67 
praises Lloyd George, 94 

"The Old Enemy," the Established 
Church, 52 

Thomas, Albert, 344 

Thomas, Alfred, later Lord Ponty- 
pridd, 59 



Thomas, D. A., later Lord Rhondda, 

55, 58, 108, 208 
Thomas, J. H., 301 
Thrace, 244 

Tirpitz, Admiral von, 134 
Tithes Bill, 50 
Tithe Rent-charge (Rates) Bill, 

61 
"Tocsin of peace," 346 
Tories, the, 36 
Tory party, 20 
Toryism, 98 
"Too Late," speech of Lloyd 

George, 205 
Trades Disputes Bill, 130 
"Transport Bill." 302 
Transvaal Volsraad, (£ 
Treaty of Versailles, 322 
"Triple Alliance" of Labour, 319 
Trotter, Job, 342 
"Truce of God," 138 
Turkey, 244 
Turks, 180, 326 

Uitlander, 66 

Ulster, 164, 188, 196, 268, 273, 308, 

327, 331 

Ulster Unionists, 308 

Uncle Toby, 151 

"Unionism," 332 

Unity of Command, 207, 230, 246, 
255-256, 352 
Allied Conference at Rapallo to 

save Italy, 237 
Kaiser says Allies have no, 239 

United States, 259, 329 
and Ireland, 309 

in the Great War, 244, see Amer- 
icans 

United Kingdom, 327 

University education, Lloyd George 
had no, 14 

Unknown Citizen, 273 

Unknown Warrior, 273 

Unknown Worker, 273 

Ure, 124 

Valdemar, 312 

Valera, Eammon de, 309, 330, 331 

Vandervelde, 280 

Vaux, 231 



INDEX 



367 



Venizelos, 293 
fall of, 326 
Verdun, 231 

Versailles Council, 239, 245, 250 
Versailles Treaty, 322 
Veto, of the Peers, 106 
Voluntary schools, 89, 93 
"Volunteer," 34 

Wales, 38, 57 

"Wales for the Welsh," 58 

Walcheren, 181 

Walpole, 16 

Walton Heath, 219 

War Cabinet, 222, 225, 236, 252 

War Council, 222 

War Council of the Cabinet, 203 

"War criminals," 274 

War Office, 176 

Washington, George, 198 

Washington Conference, 333, 335 

Waste, and reconstruction, 304 

Wells, H. G., 117 

Welsh Coercion Bill, 93 

Welsh Church Suspensary Bill, 54 

Welsh Disestablishment, 53, 85, 123 

Welsh 

dissenters, 53 

Home Rule, 35 

language, 58 

National Council, 58 

Nationalism, 58 

nationality, 55 

politics, 38 

radicalism, 40 

squirearchy, 24 

tithes, 55 
Wesley, 168 

Western front, 180, 190, 197, 252 
Westminster, IDuke of, 125 



Weygand, General, 239 
Whigs, the, 35 
William the Conqueror, 38 
Wilson, Sir Henry, 181, 238, 240, 
329 

at war office, 247 

prophecy of, 252 
Wilson, President Woodrow, 257, 
261, 269, 276, 284, 295 

Anglo-American-French Alliance, 
290 

at the conference, 293 

cable from Lloyd George, 257 

description of, 278 

lands at Brest, 278 

League of Nations, 278 

loneliness of, 276 

not sure of America, 277 

Notes of, at Conference, 281 

pre-armistice notes, 282 

schoolmaster, 276 
Women Liberals' Federation, 149 
Women voters, inclined to hero- 
worship, 273 
Women's suffrage, 149 
Wrangel, General, 321 
Wyckliffe, 168 

Yellow labour, 99 
Yorkshire coal-fields, 300 
Young England Toryism, 142 
"Young Turk" treachery, 293 
Young Wales Party, 42, 55 
Younger, Sir George, 298, 302, 304, 
333 

Zabern, 117 

Zaharoff, Sir Basil, 293 
Zeppelin raids, 211 
Zululand, 34 






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